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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



COLE LECTURES FOR 1894 



THE COLE LECTURES. 

Col. E. W. Cole, of Nashville, Term., has given in trust to 
the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the sum 
of two thousand five hundred dollars, the design and conditions 
of which bequest are stated as folloAvs: 

"The object of this fund is to establish a foundation for a 
perpetual lectureship in connection with the Biblical Depart- 
ment of the University, to be restricted in its scope to a defense 
and advocacy of the Christian Religion. These lectures shall 
be delivered at such intervals, from time to time, as shall be 
deemed best; and the particular theme and lecturer shall be de- 
termined by nomination of the Theological Faculty and con- 
firmation of the College of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South. Said lectures shall always be reduced to 
writing in full, and the manuscript of the same shall be the 
property of the University, to be published or otherwise dis- 
posed of by the Board of Trust at its discretion, the net pro- 
ceeds arising therefrom to be added to the foundation fund or 
otherwise used for the benefit of the Biblical Department." 



THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST, 



THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 



LECTURES 

Delivered before the Biblical Department of 
Vanderbilt University. 



f 

BY ALPHEUS W. WILSON, D.D., 

One of the Bishops of the Metlwdist Episcopal Churchy South. 




}?%■</</- 



Nashville, Tenn.: 

Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South. 

Barbee & Smith, Agents. 

1894. 



K. 






Copyrighted, 1894, 
By Barbee & Smith Agents 



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PREFACE. 

> 

It was with great reluctance that the work of 
preparing and delivering these lectures was under- 
taken. The habits of a lifetime are not easily set 
aside ; and the mental characteristics fixed by long 
and exclusive practice in extempore preaching do 
not readily adjust themselves to the demand for 
written sermons. The desk is an insufficient sub- 
stitute for the presence of the living congregation, 
and offers no stimulus to a sluggish brain. The 
pen becomes an unwieldy instrument under these 
conditions, and the fruit of such labor is apt to be 
vanity and vexation of spirit. Only the feeling 
that refusal would be ungracious and the hope that 
this first course of the "Cole Lectures " might 
somehow serve as a note of direction for better 
and abler successors in this field induced the ac- 
ceptance of the call. 

The purpose of this series is simple and single. 
It is intended to set forth the claims of our divine 
Lord as resting upon a basis of facts belonging to 
the region of eternal things and requiring for their 
establishment testimony from the same sphere. 
The evidences of Christianity on the historical and 
merely intellectual side have no place in the state- 
ment, not because their value is not appreciated, 
but for the reasons given in the lectures : that they 



VI THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

can only touch the earthly and human side of the 
revelation, do not include the ultimate facts, and 
can never finally and fully satisfy the conscience 
and heart of the world. 

The defects of the statement are many. They 
result in part from the considerations above given, 
in part from the necessity of keeping within pre- 
scribed limits, and partly from the unavoidable 
haste of the work. 

Such as they are, they go forth with the hope 
and prayer that they may help to a better and truer 
faith in the Son of the living God and contribute 
in some small measure, however remotely, to that 
which was the dearest purpose and controlling aim 
of his incarnate life: the salvation of men. 

A. W. W 

May 24, 1894. 



SYNOPSIS. 

LECTURE I. 
The Inadequacy of Human Testimony. pages 

Treatment of Questions Concerning His Person 3 

Not Dogmatic. Facts 4 

Certainty Demanded and Provided 5, 6 

His Own Statement 6-8 

Value and Order of It 9, 10 

Testimony of John the Baptist 10-12 

Valid, not Final. Facts not within Human Observation. 13, 14 
Not Capable of Being Conceived by the Wisdom of this 

World. Its Faiths and Philosophy J 4-i7 

Insufficiency of Science 18-21 

Results of Mere Human Testimony in Skepticism and 

Uncertainty 21-23 

Illustrations from Gospels 23, 24 

Now and Then 24, 25 

His Own Disciples 26-30 

Practical Value of Human Testimony 31 

Applied to the Historical Side of the Gospel 31, 32 

Transcendent Character of the Gospel 32-34 

Apostolic Appeal 35, 36 

The Peril and the Need of To-day 37-40 

LECTURE II. 
The Conjoint Testimony of the Father and the Son. 

Witness of Angels Excluded 43-46 

Necessity for Divine Testimony 46-4S 

Natural Ways of Divine Manifestation 48-50 

Highest and Final Form of R.evelation: Father and Son. 50-52 

(vii) 



Vlll THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

PAGE9 

Insufficiency of Deistic or Unitarian Conception of God. 52-54 

God, Father. Father, Son. Trinity 54-56 

Conjoint Testimony, Confirming Ancient Monotheistic 

Teaching 56-58 

Transcendent Statement of the Gospel 58-60 

Ethnic Conceptions of God. Ethical Failure 61, 02 

Philosophic and Scientific Notions; Moral and Spiritual 

Degeneracy and Loss of Hope 62-65 

Ground of Testimony of the Gospel; Possible Direct In- 
tercourse between God and Man 66^ 67 

Spiritual Faculty in Man 67-70 

Ethical Quality Divine. Righteousness, Law, Con- 
science 7°-75 

Love; Equally Disclosure of God in Relations of Father 

and Son 75, 76 

Conjunction of Righteousness and Love the Complete 

Revelation of Father and Son 76-78 

Special Articulate Utterance at Baptism and Transfigu- 
ration Culmination of Testimonies 78-81 

Summary 82, 83 

LECTURE III. 
The Testimony of the Works. 

Identity in Working of Father and Son 87, 88 

The Works Natural Expressions of the Son 88 

Work and Works ; a Single Purpose 88 

Only Such as the Father Gave Him to Do 89, 90 

Completion of Work of the Father 90 

Purpose, Salvation of Men 91 

His Work: 1. Revelation of God 9J-93 

Natural and Hebraic Revelations 93, 94 

Our Lord's Advance upon These 95 

Knowledge of God Determined by Relation to the 

Son 95-97 



SYNOPSIS. IX 

PAGES 

2. Revelation of Man 97 

(1) Communion with God, Which Is Essential to 

the Knowledge of God, Affirms Possible 

Worth and Power of Human Nature 97, 98 

Illustrated in Son of Man 98, 99 

(2) By This the Ethical Relations of Man Are 

Determined 99 

By Reaffirmation of Righteous Relations be- 
tween God and Man 99, ico 

By Referring These Relations to Their Source 

in the Godhead 100, 101 

3. His Work Redemptive 101-103 

(1) By Completing the Revelation of Sin 103 

Use, Limitations, and Enlargement of Law... 103-106 

Standard of Righteousness in Jesus Christ 106-108 

(2) By Remission of Sins 108-1 10 

Exclusive Authority of Jesus Christ no 

Referred to His Eternal Relations with God 

and Consequent Relations with the World. 110-116 
His Entrance into Human History; Assertion 

of His Authority and Rights 116-119 

Oneness of the Race 120,121 

Identification with the Body of Humanity 121 

Nature of His Redemptive Work Suggested: 

1. By His Relations to the World as Head 122 

2. By His Relations from the Human Side to God. 123 

3. By His Fulfillment of All Righteousness 123 

4. By His Endurance of Human Penalty 123 

5. By His Vindication in the Resurrection 123 

His Works: As Signs , .. . , 124,125 

As Assertions of His Authority 125, 126 

Attestations of the Divinity of His Person 126, 127 

Expressions of the Mind of God toward Man 127 



X THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

LECTURE IV. 
The Witness of the Scriptures. pages 

Appeal to the Scriptures 131, 132 

1. The Old Testament and the New Stand or Fall 

Together 132 

2. The Old Testament Intended for the "Ages to 

Come." 133, 134 

3. The Scriptures Were Inspired of God 134, 135 

To Be Read by the Light of Later Times 1 35, 136 

The Right Reading of Them 136, 1 37 

Preparatory 1 37, 138 

Preparation in Gentile History 138, 139 

Prophetic Element 140-142 

The Promise 142-144 

The Covenant „ . . . 144-146 

Special Manifestations of God 146-148 

Progress of Revelation 148-151 

Pre-Mosaic Standard of Righteousness and Di- 
vine Discipline 151-155 

Place and Function of the Law I 55~ I 57 

Its Religious and Its Secular Side 157 

Priesthood 157, 158 

Sacrifice , 1 58, 1 59 

Ceremonial System 159 

Civil Polity 159,160 

Insufficiency of the Law 161-163 

Prophecy: Its Institution, Functions, and Growth 163-167 

Its Fulfillment 168, 169 

LECTURE V. 
The Testimony of the Spirit. 
The Comforter Christ's Final Provision for His Church. 173-174 
Complement and Completion of All Antecedent Reve- 
lation 1 74-1 76 



SYNOPSIS. XI 

PAGES 

His Place in the Life of the Son of Man 176, 177 

1. His Name: "Comforter" 177, 178 

2. Sent by the Son 178 

3. Sent from the Father 179 

4. Spirit of Truth 179, 180 

5. He Testifies of Christ 180, 181 

His Testimony to Chosen Disciples 181-183 

By Personal Communion 184-187 

With Individuals; not Body Corporate 187, 188 

He " Opened Their Understanding" 1S8-192 

First Outward Effect of His Coming Was upon 

Speech 192 

Gift of Power 192, 193 

Completeness of His Operation 194 

Its Typical Character; and Distinct from Outward 

and Sensuous Service 195, 196 

Source and Test of Character and Director of all 

Christian Activities 196-199 

Estimate of the Gift as Compared Avith the Incar- 
nate Life 199-201 

His Testimony to the World 201, 202 

In Conviction of Sin 202-205 

In Conviction of Righteousness f . 205-207 

In Conviction of Judgment 207-208 

He Bears Witness through Human Agency 209, 210 

The Sum of It All 210, 211 

LECTURE VI. 
The Testimony of the Church. 

Resume 1 of Facts. 215 

Resume of Proofs 216 

Completed Testimonj-: 

Committed, on Divine Side, to the Holy Spirit. . . . 216, 217 

On Human Side, to Man " Chosen before of God ". . 217, 218 



Xll THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

PAGES 

Value of Human Element 218, 219 

Witnesses Must Have Immediate Knowledge 219-222 

Witnesses to Be Vindicated. Demonstration of the 

Spirit 222, 223 

Gifts of Power and Its Effect 223, 224 

Power of the Spirit, Its Nature and Operation 224, 225 

Character of the Church 225-227 

Competency of Witnesses 227-229 

Form of Testimony of the Church 229 

1. It Reproduces Ideal of the Lord's Life and Work 229 
In Personal Experience, Conformity to the Im- 
age of the Son of God 229-234 

Methods of Life and Growth 234-236 

Power and Completeness of Individual Life 236, 237 

2. It Secures and Conveys the Testimony. ...» 237 

As Having in Custody the Oracles of God 237 

As Recording the Lord's Life and Its Conse- 
quents 237, 238 

As Guarding the Course and Text of Scripture. . 238-240 
It Provides the Evidences, Historical and Crit- 
ical, of Christianity 240, 241 

3. It Bears Its Witness in the Order and Adminis- 

tration of the Church 241, 242 

Discipline 242 

Public Worship and Sacraments 242, 243 

Organized Agencies for Doing Good 244 

4. Relations of Church to Secular Life 245, 246 

Conclusion , 247, 248 



LECTURE I. 

THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN 

TESTIMONY. 

(1) 



I. 

THE INADE^UACT OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 

" Ye sent unto John, and he hare witness unto the truth. But 
I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye 
might be saved." John v. 33, 34. 

THE questions that were raised concerning him- 
self, whatever might have been the motive 
that prompted them, were not treated by our Lord 
in a speculative way, or to satisfy the demand of 
the intellect. His point of view and line of state- 
ment were thoroughly and exclusively practical. 
According to his avowed purpose, his speech and 
his life were directed upon the one end of human 
salvation. " These things I say, that ye might 
be saved.' ' It was inevitable that the truths he 
uttered and the claims he made should provoke 
discussion. There is no authority so high that 
it will suffice to still the curious questionings 
of men. But it was not as matter for dialectics 
that he advanced his claim and declared the truth 
of his person. According to his view, the world 
needed to know him in order to be saved. "If 
ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your 
sins." 

(8) 



4 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

It follows that the question is not to be treated 
in a merely dogmatic way. It has become so 
much the habit of theology to treat the person of 
Christ as a matter of doctrinal statement and defi- 
nitions that its character and value as a fact have 
been obscured. Who was he? what was he? not 
how, were the questions to which he gave answer, 
and in settlement of which he appealed to the ap- 
propriate testimonies. He gave no explanations 
and entered upon no defense of the mysteries in- 
volved in his claims. He knew, as we know, that 
the nearer we come to God and the truer and 
more distinct our consciousness of him, the more 
impossible it becomes to define and explain him, 
and the more impotent and unappreciable is any 
defense of his nature and claims set up before the 
mere human understanding. " With the heart 
man believeth." The fact enters into the experi- 
rience of countless multitudes who know God, 
while they are wholly incompetent to pursue the 
cold calculations of the intellect which, far as they 
reach and vast as is their compass, have not found 
out God. 

In truth, the issues involved were too great both 
as effecting his own rightful place in the universe, 
and as touching the destinies of the world, to be 
committed to the uncertainties of doctrinal discus- 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 5 

sion. He spake as one having authority, and pro- 
posed to satisfy the demand of his Church and of 
the individual conscience with nothing less than 
the certainty of those things wherein they were in- 
structed. Doubtful disputations concerning even 
minor matters are of doubtful utility; but when 
they touch the very substance of our gospel and 
reduce the person of the Son of God to the level 
of a thesis for intellectual discussion we feel that 
the sanctities of the Godhead are invaded, the tem- 
ple of the Father desecrated, and the dearest and 
most sacred experiences of the Christian soul 
tossed to and fro as the sport and plaything of a 
profane curiosity. No dishonoring uncertainty 
has characterized the confession of the Church of 
God from the days of the apostles to the present. 
Through storm and tumult and change, in the face 
of skepticism and despite opposition, with unfal- 
tering utterance she has reiterated the great facts : 
"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker 
of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only 
begotten Son, our Lord." With invincible con- 
viction she has proclaimed these facts as the only 
ground of hope for the world and the center of at- 
traction for all worlds, indispensable to the order 
and harmony of the universe. For in him are to 
be gathered together under one head all things 



6 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

which are in heaven and which are on earth. Un- 
certainty and doubt are fatal to the mission of the 
Church. 

Jesus Christ did not fail to make ample provis- 
ion for the confirmation and full assurance of faith. 
The testimony which he adduces should be pre- 
ceded by a summary account of his character and 
claims as given by himself and attested by the 
witnesses to which he appeals. 

The name which was divinely given him before 
his birth, Jesus, includes, when searched by the 
light of its purpose and of his own teaching and 
work, all that is expressed in names and titles aft- 
erward assumed or given, and finds its only suffi- 
cient explanation in them. His name shall be called 
Jesus — Saviour — because " he shall save his peo- 
ple from their sins," for his power to do this in- 
volves his own freedom from and absolute supe- 
riority to all sin, his right to control the lives and 
hearts of men, and divine authority to do away 
with sin by forgiveness through the sacrifice of 
himself. He has the name, not in virtue of his 
work as the messenger of God's offer of forgive- 
ness, but because of his own person and the rights 
and powers inseparable therefrom. The " Son of 
Man," his most frequent appellation, distinguishes 
him from all men, and asserts for him an ideal 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 7 

character and representative relation involving 
the interests of the race. The " Christ," the 
" Anointed," puts him in the place claimed for the 
Messiah of the Old Testament, while the pregnant 
phrase so often joined to it, "Son of the Living 
God," lifts him above the plane of Jewish thought 
of the Messiah, and refers the Messianic charac- 
ter to his immediate relationship in nature and be- 
ing to the interior life of the invisible God. When 
to these are added his oft-repeated declarations 
concerning his relations with the Godhead, such 
as " The Father sent me" — not sent from any 
point or condition of finite life, but from God, 
from the inner life of the Godhead, from the " bo- 
som of the Father" into the life of the world, or 
even more intensely spoken, " I proceeded forth 
and came from God; " " Not that any man hath 
seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath 
seen the Father;" " No man hath ascended up to 
heaven, but he that came down from heaven;" 
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;" 
"I and my Father are one;" "That all men 
should honor the Son, even as they honor the Fa- 
ther," and many other direct and incidental as- 
sertions of prerogative and power essential to his 
character, there is found ample vindication of the 
whole breadth and depth of New Testament teach- 



8 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

ing, and of the faith of the true Church of God 
through all its ages. He is God "manifest in the 
flesh;" "the Son — the brightness of the glory of 
the Father, and the express image of his person, 
who when he had by himself purged our sins, sat 
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high," 
"the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of 
every creature [of all creation]." The complete 
statement is given in the prologue, as it is called, 
the true beginning, the thesis of the Gospel of 
John, a summary of the facts concerning his per- 
son, upon which all the testimonies are brought to 
bear and all hope for men depends. "In the be- 
ginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God, and the Word was God. The same was in 
the beginning with God. All things were made 
by him ; and without him was not anything made 
that was made. In him was life; and the life was 
the light of men. . . . That was the true light, 
which lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world. . . . And the Word was made flesh, 
and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the 
glory as of the only begotten of the Father, ) full 
of grace and truth." 

We are constrained to take these statements of 
himself as the starting point of our inquiry. For 
first the testimonies which we shall consider are to 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 9 

be estimated according to their appropriateness to 
this view. Further, his entire life of speech, work, 
and suffering was conformed to those statements 
and must find in them its sufficient account and its 
full explanation. Besides, the very existence, 
perpetuity, and success of the Church as his wit- 
ness and representative in the world are condi- 
tioned upon the sufficiency and truthfulness of his 
own declarations ; and the whole body of New 
Testament teaching concerning his person and 
work is but the expansion of, and must be vindi- 
cated by his utterances, else your faith is vain. 
Here, as in its first application, is his saying true: 
" The word that I have spoken, that shall judge 
you." At the very outset we ask, as did the Jews, 
" Whom makest thou thyself? " 

The answer which he furnishes is distinct and 
unequivocal. It is true that there was in his earlier 
ministry a measure of reserve and even reticence 
that contrasts strongly with his later — especially his 
Judean — teachings. That was to be expected. It 
is agreement with divine methods of dealing with 
men. He taught as they were able to bear it. 
There was no uncertainty, no ambiguity in his 
life and relations to the world. From the first he 
assumed the position of rightful superiority to, and 
authority over all men — Moses and the prophets 



IO THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

included — that was without precedent or parallel. 
The sermon on the Mount is as significant and em- 
phatic in the assertion of this preeminence, as the 
later chapters of John's Gospel. Beginning with 
such an assumption, by gradual disclosures in life 
and teaching he opened the understanding of his 
disciples until they were prepared for the great 
revelation — which at the time seemed to them final, 
the fullest that could be made — issuing in the great 
confession: " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God." But " from that time," the moment 
of Peter's exultant acknowledgment, he taught 
them in other form, and out of the deepening 
gloom of his humiliation gave intenser and more 
distinct impression to his consciousness of divine 
sonship. As the antagonisms of the world became 
fiercer and its hate more malignant, his assertion 
of himself became more pronounced and his offer 
of himself to the faith and hope of men more ear- 
nest as well as more significant. He used all le- 
gitimate means for securing conviction, and in this 
behalf appealed to all available witnesses. 

In the order of narrative John the Baptist ap- 
pears as the first witness to the truth. His descent, 
character, and life were his credentials. Born into 
a priestly line, he was entitled to the place and pre- 
rogative attaching to his hereditary calling. The 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. II 

circumstances of his birth signalized him as set 
apart for an entraordinary mission to the chosen 
people. His early home training was under the 
direction of parents who "were both righteous 
before God, walking in all the commandments 
and ordinances of the Lord blameless." Years 
of solitude and meditation in the wilderness, far 
from the stir and passion and artificial conditions 
of city life, contributed to his self-discipline and 
the integrity of his character, attested by his 
complete renunciation of all things not necessary 
to the fulfillment of his course. With all these, 
his prophetic standing and his fearless utterance 
secured for him a commanding position among the 
people and gave authority to his testimony. He 
occupied the highest place in public estimation; 
and people of all classes, including scribes and 
Pharisees, came to his baptism. When the Jews 
of Jerusalem sent to him priests and Levites to in- 
quire into his claims, he made distinct and unam- 
biguous answer: " I am not the Christ. I am the 
voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight 
the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esais. 
There standeth one among you whom ye know not. 
He it is who coming after me is preferred before 
me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to un- 
loose." As reported in the synoptic Gospels, " He 



12 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with 
fire." A little later he points to Jesus as " the 
Lamb of. God that taketh away the sin of the 
world," and with increasing urgency he bare re- 
cord saying, " I saw the Spirit descending from 
heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And 
I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize 
with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom 
thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining 
on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the 
Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this 
is the Son of God." More direct and decisive 
testimony could have been given by no man. Nor 
is its force abated by the fact that in the last days 
of his life, when he knew that his work was done, 
he sent from his prison messengers to Jesus saying: 
66 Art thou he that should come, or do we look for 
another? " Such a question could have had no 
meaning addressed to one of whom he stood in 
doubt. It was, indeed, his final official act trans- 
ferring his work and his disciples to the Master 
to whom he had testified. Conforming himself to 
the divine method of life and teaching, he would 
have them put their faith not in his testimony, but 
in what they should see and hear from the Lord 
himself. 

Jesus certainly did not intend to repudiate such 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 1 3 

testimony. He certifies its validity by his own 
words: "Ye sent unto John and he bare witness 
to the truth." It had inestimable value as a pro- 
phetic announcement of his entrance upon his great 
work, and was in perfect agreement with the whole 
body of prophetic scriptures to which he afterward 
appealed. It was the indispensable preparation for 
his ministry. It is yet more evident that he did 
not intend to exclude such witness, seeing that in 
arranging for the propagation of the gospel he 
commissioned men whose supreme, almost exclu- 
sive function was to testify of him. The nature 
and value of their testimony will be considered 
hereafter. It is enough here to note the fact that 
we may put a true construction upon his words, " I 
receive not testimony from man." He does not 
intend that the validity of his claim shall finally de- 
pend upon the sufficiency of any human testimony. 
In the terms of St. Paul when disclaiming the right 
of dominion over the faith of the Church, " Your 
faith should not stand in the wisdom of men." 

The substance of the gospel — that is to say, all 
that is involved in the person, the power, and com- 
ing of our Lord Jesus Christ — lies beyond the pos- 
sible range of human observation and investigation. 
It is indissolubly linked to an antecedent life — 
"before the foundation of the world" — quite as 



14 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

essential to the work he was sent to do, and to 
the sufficiency of the sacrificial offering of himself, 
as the manifested life in the flesh, and to a subse- 
quent life of princely station and saving power in 
most intimate relation to the Church in its militant 
state and vital to its final triumph and reward. In- 
deed, whatever value we may attach to the life, la- 
bors, and sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth, viewed 
as an incident, or an episode in the course of 
human history, it is impossible to exalt them to 
the supreme place of the saving power for the 
world, and set him as the bearer of the sin of the 
world, unless we can lift him above the plane of 
mere human action and endurance, and concede 
to him command of the ultimate sources of wis- 
dom and power. For the whole tendency of hu- 
man character, and all the energies of human will 
in the individual and in the race, from the begin- 
ning of time — to say nothing of preternatural so- 
licitation and influence — are expressed in the term 
sin ; and to take away sin the tendency must be 
reversed and the will controlled and directed by 
forces mightier than human passion and endeavor, 
and more subtle than the finest and most secret in- 
stincts of the race. 

The conception of such a life and its entrance 
into our state was foreign to the wisdom of this 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 1 5 

world, whether expressed in the false faiths that 
have grown out of the sense of evil dominant in 
nature and the dread of worse to come, or out 
of the striving of the few better souls after the 
knowledge of God, or in the philosophies which 
exhausted the resources of intellect in the effort 
to find the ground of being and define the re- 
lations between God and the world. Ample 
proof and illustration of this may be found in 
the painful and futile strivings, continued to our 
own day, of Oriental worshipers to rid themselves 
of the embarrassment and oppression of sin, and 
find some way of bringing God and man together. 
Their notions of God were almost entirely void of 
ethical contents, and issued in blurred and confused 
conceptions of sin. For the most part they could 
not separate the idea of evil from finite existence, 
and hoped for release only in the ultimate absorp- 
tion of all being in God. Thus the conscience of 
sin disappeared from among them; while, on the 
other hand, their view of God was resolved into 
polytheistic theories, and their avatars were re- 
duced to unreal appearances. Their abstruse phi- 
losophies, as far removed from the true order and 
practical issues of intellectual life as their faith and 
worship were from the demand and hope of the 
ethical and spiritual life, left them without any ba- 



IO THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST, 

sis in thought for the distinction between God and 
the world, and rendered a reconciliation between 
them impossible. In form or in tendency they were 
atheistic, agnostic, pantheistic, or polytheistic; or 
rather it might be said that all these forms and ten- 
dencies, driven by the irrepressible needs of hu- 
man nature, issued in a gross polytheism — "gods 
many and lord's many." The dualism of Zoroas- 
ter and the naturalistic worship of the Egyptians, 
and even their "esoteric" doctrines, speculative 
rather than practical, form no exception. They 
are equally far removed from the Christian view 
of God and man, their real distinction and intimate 
relation with each other, of the sin of the world 
and the saving power and process set forth in the 
incarnation. In this view the gospel is absolutely 
unique. The life which was the light of men ap- 
pears only in its provision. It unmeasurably trans- 
cends even the old Hebrew thought, and, appeal- 
ing to the law and the prophets as witnesses to its 
Christ, presents him in such radiance of divine 
glory and fullness of divine life that even the chil- 
dren of the prophets are startled and amazed, 
while reverent prophetic souls like Isaiah abase 
themselves with humble confession before the 
throne and. worship. It is the marvel of the gos- 
pel that in the person of the God-man, the "Word 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. I J 

made flesh," it incorporates the Godhead into the 
body of our humanity, without abasing one jot or 
tittle of the reverence due to the king, eternal, im- 
mortal, invisible, or lessening the sense of sin in 
the conscience. Rather by the assumption of the 
" likeness of sinful flesh" sin is made exceeding 
sinful and worship more true, profound, and spir- 
itual. It was the ethical failure of the heathen re- 
ligions that made impossible to them the idea of a 
true union of God and man, and led, on the one 
side, to the view so often expressed among them 
of a temporary transformation, apparent rather 
than real, of their gods into the likeness of men, 
and the final extinction of the finite by absorption 
into the divine; and on the other, to the exalta- 
tion of man to the state of the gods, the apo- 
theosis of our nature, yet dominated by the resist- 
less power of fate, to which even the will of the 
supreme gods was subject. 

Nowhere outside of Christian life and thought 
has the idea of the true and permanent conjunction 
and coexistence of God and man in one person- 
ality been considered. "The world by- wisdom 
knew not God;" and failing to discern him, it was 
hopelessly ignorant of the spiritual and ethical ele- 
ments needed to mediate between God and man, 
and to lay the ground for redemption to right- 



l8 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

eousness in a true and complete incarnation. In 
all the course of its researches and efforts it has 
given illustration of the prophetic statement as 
quoted by the apostle, "Eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of 
man, the things which God hath prepared for them 
that love him." As by no method of worship and 
by no processes of philosophy the truth of the gos- 
pel could be attained, so neither could it be dis- 
covered by any direct personal observation or in- 
vestigation* The natural man has no faculties by 
which he- may bridge the mighty chasm between 
the seen and. the unseen, or project himself beyond 
the boundaries of actual experience and bring 
within the scope of his knowledge the facts and 
forces belonging to the world that lies outside the 
region of sensible observation. The natural fac- 
ulties may be mightily aided and enlarged in their 
sphere by the appliances and methods discovered 
and invented with the increase of knowledge. By 
these helps the area of accepted facts and conclu- 
sions has been so far extended that some minds 
have determined that there can be nothing which 
is not reducible to the terms of materialism ; or that, 
if there be aught beyond, it cannot be known. It 
is true that the limit fixed by the systems of the 
past are daily pushed farther out, and spaces, 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 1 9 

worlds, and forces are included in the order of our 
day that were not dreamed of in the imaginings of 
the generations gone. But there is a limit never- 
theless. Physical science, by the very terms of 
its existence, as well as by the conditions under 
which it does its work, is forever confined to mat- 
ter and force. Whatever does not come under 
these categories can never be subjected to its proc- 
esses. Deceived by the close connections of mind 
and matter, and determined to find within its own 
sphere account of the strange phenomena result- 
ing from and depending upon these connections, 
it attempts to resolve the subtle, indefinable, spir- 
itual elements of human nature and life into forms 
of force and denies to them any higher or other 
place than it assigns to the dynamics of the mate- 
rial universe. The failure- — as in the persistent 
effort to find the sources and meaning of life — but 
emphasizes the limitations of research and warns 
the bold investigator back within his own lines. 
Still more certainly does the closest and most dili- 
gent inquiry find itself baffled and defeated when 
it attempts to pass beyond the boundaries of time 
and space and uncover the mysteries of the eter- 
nal state and bring into view the facts of the divine 
life. The immediate and inevitable result of such 
endeavor has been to substitute conjecture for fact 



20 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

and speculation for the process of true scientific 
research. If the person and work of our Lord be 
held as veritable facts with the momentous issues 
of human history and final destiny depending upon 
them, they cannot be left to the uncertainties of 
such methods. The ruling power of this world 
and all worlds cannot be treated as a conjecture, 
nor the tremendous concerns of eternity suspended 
upon the validity and sufficiency of a speculation 
and a theory. The best results of any hypothesis 
— call it a "working hypothesis," if you wish to 
assert for it a possible value — with deductions, in- 
ferences, and conclusions, can rest upon nothing 
more than human authority. To insure certainty 
for them, an infallible reason must be predicated 
and absolutely perfect instruments and methods of 
inquiry. It has not yet come into the range of hu- 
man experience that such conditions have been 
provided, save in the single case of Him who is the 
subject of investigation, and him the world did not 
believe. The long catalogue of difficulties en- 
countered and errors exposed in every line of re- 
search led a diligent student, himself eminent in 
science, to ask: " How can we be sure that there 
may not be still other causes of constant error in- 
validating our results?" His own answer is: 
" Obviously we cannot be sure." He trusts to the 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 21 

future to revise results and correct mistakes, and 
has hope that through slow and halting progress 
the truth will finally be reached. But, taking 
counsel of experience, and seeing that with every 
advance of knowledge the problems of life become 
more complicated and difficult of solution, will we, 
can we ever be sure that errors have been avoided, 
or content ourselves with results as final and satis- 
factory, save in the comparatively few cases where 
material things are concerned and exhaustive ex- 
periment can verify the work, or mathematics es- 
tablish the conclusion with the certainty of an in- 
fallible calculation? 

If we are to be restricted to mere human testi- 
mony, we shall be constrained to accept the skep- 
tical position and admit that there is no warrant in 
experience for the wonders of the gospel, and that 
no amount of testimony is sufficient to overcome 
the weight of experience against them. The 
change of attitude, so often observed, in offering 
apology for the miracle instead of relying upon it 
in proof of our Lord's claim, and the shifts and 
evasions resorted to in order to get rid of it, or re- 
duce it to the plane of a natural and normal event, 
or incident, show how firmly the conviction of the 
fallibility and insufficiency of mere human state- 
ments has become fixed in the mind of the world. 



22 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

That Hume's reasoning was illegitimate is certain; 
but this was because he refused to admit into his 
thought elements that were indispensable to the 
soundness of his premises and the correctness of 
his logical procedure. Looking only to the limita- 
tions and the fallibility of men, and reckoning upon 
the admitted uniformity of nature, he could reach 
no other conclusion. 

Nor is it in the schools of skepticism and physical 
science alone that uncertainty prevails. The same 
condition confronts us wherever mere human 
agency, however honest and eager for the truth, 
interposes and gives formal statement and defini- 
nition, to explain, to demonstrate the facts of our 
gospel. So soon as these are put into dogmatic 
shape, diversities of judgment, varieties of theo- 
logical opinion and positive antagonisms of creed 
arise. The schools, the pupil, and the press offer 
to-day ample proof and illustration, while the con- 
tentions and controversies which have marked the 
history of the Church have become proverbial. 
If the knowledge of the only living and true God, 
and of Jesus Christ whom he sent, be made de- 
pendent upon such testimonies, and our eternal life 
hang upon this knowledge, we are sadly straitened. 
To what witness shall we go? What school shall 
we follow? What formula shall we use? We are 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 23 

almost constrained to say with Amiel, "About Je- 
sus we must believe no one but himself. Certainly 
we must accept the conclusion of the late Bishop 
of Durham: "If it is not by the senses, so neither 
is it by theological and scientific faculties that we 
can apprehend God, can see the Father. These 
faculties may verify, may explain, may s} T stematize ; 
but they cannot give the insight, cannot create the 
belief. I doubt whether the most elaborate proofs 
of the being and attributes of God, the most sub- 
tle expositions of the evidences of Christianity have 
done very much toward establishing even an intel- 
lectual assent. I am quite sure that they have been 
all but powerless in commanding a living, working 
belief." 

The gospels, the truest and most profound dis- 
closures of human as well as divine nature, offer 
us the best illustrations and strongest proofs of the 
insufficiency of mere human testimony. The in- 
carnate life as there portrayed is confessedly 
unique. In all excellencies of character and won- 
ders of achievement it is without peer. It has given 
the world its one supreme ideal of greatness and 
beauty, standing out in unapproachable splendor 
upon the background of patriarchal, legal, and 
prophetic life — yea, of all antecedent historic life — 
and flinging its glory upon the ages of apostolic 



24 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

heroism and lighting up the shadows of the later 
centuries. As we look back upon that marvelous 
figure the halo is about his head and the ideal has 
emerged from the obscurity of the hard and nar- 
row conditions in the midst of which he did his 
work. We can never even think of him as he ap- 
peared to the men of his time. Art has exhaust- 
ed its resources in the effort to reproduce his form 
and features, and has only succeeded in offering to 
the wonder and worship of the world an idealized 
conception of what he ought to have been. We 
know him after the flesh no more. The Man of 
Sorrows, having no form nor comeliness, and no 
beauty that we should desire him, is forever gone 
from the thought and heart of men. Yet we know 
that he did not appear to his own generation as to 
us, and wonder at the blindness and stupidity 
which held the men of that day back from him. 
In Nazareth, the son of the carpenter, whose 
" mother and sisters are here with us," was an 
offense. He upbraids the cities in which his 
mighty works were done, Chorazin, Bethsaida, 
and even Capernaum, which was exalted unto 
heaven, because they repented not. When he 
came nigh to Jerusalem, he wept over the sacred 
city and with infinite pathos denounced against it 
the dreadful doom of utter destruction, because it 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 25 

knew not the time of its visitation. The multitudes 
came to him not because they saw the sign, but 
because they did eat of the loaves and were filled. 
His own disciples, almost at the last hour of his 
sojourn with them, he reproved as " fools and slow 
of heart to believe." It seems strange to us, and 
from the point of view of these last days, we se- 
cretly incline to say with Peter, " Be this far from 
thee, Lord;" these things ought not so to have 
been. The contrast between the ideal and the 
real, the thought of our time and the view of his 
own period, is sharply drawn when we read the 
inimitable, exquisite sketch of the " Character cf 
Christ," by an eminent preacher of the last gen- 
eration outside the pale of intellectual orthodoxy, 
It is the work of a master, and in lines of almost 
perfect beauty sets before us the form of the Son 
of Man as he appears from the open heavens, trans- 
figured in the sight of the world. Death and time 
and history and unrecognized influences have done 
their work, so that even Channing was constrained 
to join the centurion in the confession, " Truly this 
was, not only was, but is, the Son of God." 

But then the human side dominated, and men 
looked at him with only human eyes, incapable of 
discerning the glory that Isaiah had seen. Proph- 
ecy found its fulfillment in them. Having eyes 



26 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

they see not, and ears they hear not: neither do 
they understand with their heart. The organs 
which are cognizant of spiritual things were not 
awake in them. The natural, man could not know 
the things of God; and the mystery of God, even 
the Father, and of Christ was hidden from them. 
Moral obliquity and intellectual incapacity were 
alike concerned in the failure. 

All this might not have seemed so strange and 
even unnatural had it happened among the nations 
given to idolatry and imbruted by the abominations 
of idolatrous life. But he came unto his own. 
They were his own b}^ covenant and by legal and 
prophetic training. Nothing had been wanting to 
educate and prepare them for his coming. Yet 
his own received him not. In spite of all that 
had gone before, they considered only which was 
seen of him in the flesh, put the fleshly interpreta- 
tion upon it, could not behind the signs that he 
gave them see the things signified, and in the gross- 
ness of their mind demanded a sign from heaven 
quite other than that he was daily furnishing. 

If ever the human understanding could by ration- 
al process be brought to the apprehension of the 
divine character of the Son of Man, it would surely 
have been in the case of the twelve disciples. In 
a peculiar sense they were his own, more intimately 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 27 

so than the body of the Jewish people claimed for 
him by the evangelist. He had chosen them and 
called them to himself. Some of them had been 
the disciples of John, the forerunner, and by him 
had been prepared for the advent of the Messiah; 
and perhaps all of them had heard, as had the 
Jews from Jerusalem, John's testimony concerning 
him. They had the faith of their forefathers, 
quickened and purified by their baptism with wa- 
ter — John's baptism — unto repentance. They 
were sober-minded men, eager and self-renouncing 
in their pursuit of the truth. If any of them, as 
Levi, had been under the sway of the passions and 
vices of the world, the complete and final aban- 
donment of them at His call sufficiently indicated 
their emancipation from the blinding influence, 
while former experience in the active, practical 
concerns of life, sharpened their faculties and for- 
bade hasty judgments under the impulse of enthu- 
siasm or popular excitement. The Gospel of Mat- 
thew is in evidence. Never were materials of such 
sort handled in such sober andunimpassioned way. 
These men were taught by the Lord himself in 
public and in private. The mysteries of his king- 
dom which were spoken to the people in parables 
were to them expounded plainly and in full. They 
were brought into most intimate association with his 



28 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

private and inner life ; and in the extravagance of his 
love — to borrow Archdeacon Farrar's phrase — he 
lavished upon them the resources of his wonderful 
person. The bare synopsis of his work and words 
given us in the Gospels reveals a fullness of utter- 
ance and achievement that would seem to leave 
nothing to be desired. But to this must be added 
the " many other things that are not written in this 
book," the daily life of labor and prayer, the mi- 
nute and careful instruction, and the awakening, 
purifying, and elevating power of all these, upon 
their moral and spiritual faculties. Nothing that 
could be conveyed through the regular channels 
to the mind of man was withheld. At the critical 
moment in his career and of their connection with 
him he brings them to the test. In the coasts of 
Csesarea Philippi, remote from the disturbing in- 
fluences of the multitudes, and free for the moment 
from the stimulating effect of his wonderful work- 
ing, he asks them the question: " Whom do men 
say that I, the Son of man, am?" The tide of 
public opinion, moved by all the forces of his char- 
ter and work, had up to that time set in his favor. 
He was assigned a position of sanctity and of au- 
thority as teacher and prophet. Beyond this the 
mind of the people could not go. The varying 
temper and conscience affected the reason and 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 20. 

judgment of them all, and left him with an unde- 
fined rank among the men commissioned of God 
for special service. Nothing more can ever be 
looked for from the unaided mind of man. Its 
highest culture, its keenest insight will never lift it 
beyond its environments or force it from the pro- 
clivities, propensions, and affections inwrought into 
the moral constitution. The differences among 
men when they confront questions of this sort are 
precisely those suggested in this interview. 

"Whom say ye that I am?" A fuller light, a 
deeper insight had been vouchsafed to them, and a 
larger response was to have been expected. It was 
given; and the first of the great confessions by 
which the Church has honored the Son fell from 
the lips of Peter: "Thou art the Christ, the son 
of the living God." It was not the last, nor was 
it the fullest except by implication and as inter- 
preted by more profound and light-giving teachings 
of later date. But such as it was, the Son of Man 
immediately disclaims for it any human authority, 
denies the power of " flesh and blood" to discover 
or reveal him, and withdraws his Church at once 
and forever from the sphere of human wisdom and 
power and commits it exclusively to the one foun- 
dation laid in the supernatural revelation and ap- 
prehension of the truth of his person. 



30 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

How limited was their conception of the mean- 
ing of the words they used appears directly when 
Peter, upon the Lord's announcement of his com- 
ing humiliation and death, rebukes him and would 
turn him from his purpose. The stern reply of 
the Son of God show 7 s that the apostle was still so 
far out of sympathy with the mind of God that his 
attitude was that of an adversary, and he was in- 
capable of appreciating the work of God in and 
through his Son. Nor does there seem to be 
much advance from this point to the day of his 
resurrection. The sharp contrasts of joy and sor- 
row, light and darkness, life and death, which he 
continually set before them, puzzled and bewil- 
dered them. They thought that he spake in par- 
ableSo When, by gradual approaches, he led 
them, all unknowing the way they took, to the su- 
preme and final declarations of his work and of 
his personal relations to the Father, they still 
asked: " Show us the Father." And when the 
darkness of the shameful death had covered them, 
and intimation was brought of a possible recovery 
from even that disaster, the strongest word that 
they could speak was: " We hoped that it was he 
which should redeem. Israel." So incomplete, so 
obscure was the testimony that until this hour these 
chosen and trained witnesses were able to give. 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 3 1 

The validity of human testimony lies at the 
foundation of all our knowledge and enters into 
the substance of our life. Our earliest lessons we 
take from those who have gone over the way be- 
fore us. Instinctively we put faith in their words. 
We may find in later years that they were mistak- 
en, or have willfully deceived us; but we do not 
therefore withdraw our confidence from the world 
with which we associate. To discredit all that is 
told us is to make life impossible. The verifica- 
tion in authorized and sure ways is, to most of us, 
impracticable; and, with whatever measures of 
reserve, we are content for the practical purposes 
of life to accept the results reached by those who 
have ability and opportunity for research. 

The same is true in measure when we come to 
deal with the historical side of our gospel. 
The actual presence of Jesus of Nazareth in the 
world is as much matter of historical inquiry as 
that of Caesar or Seneca. What he did and what 
he said may be reported with as much accuracy 
by eye and ear witnesses as the sayings of Socra- 
tes or the achievements of Alexander. These 
have their human side and their earthly setting, 
and the resources of criticism have been expend- 
ed upon them without protest or objection from 
any of those to whom the Christ is most dear and 



32 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

most sacred, If this were all the contents of our 
gospel, we could be willing to let it stand upon the 
same ground as any other event or series of 
events in history, and ask for it the same sort and 
measure of faith that are accorded to the records 
of other times and places. 

But, in truth, there are elements in this history 
as we all feel and many of us know, that put it in 
an exceptional position and charge it with a value 
immeasurably transcending that attaching to any 
other records. This inquiry does not look simply 
to the increase of the sum of human knowledge; 
nor does it propose to enlighten us from the expe- 
rience of the past as to the errors to be avoided 
and the plans to be pursued in advancing the in- 
terests and regulating the affairs of this world. If 
the record of the gospel is to be believed, it has a 
higher significance and a purpose that reaches far- 
ther. It will not suffer us to restrict our thought 
(our knowledge) in either direction to the times 
and conditions of this present world. Turning 
back, it links us to the purpose and life " before 
the foundation of the world," which gave begin- 
ning, order, and meaning to all that was created 
or ever shall be. Turning forward, it projects us 
beyond the boundaries of time, through the epi- 
sode of death, into the interminable ages of con- 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 33 

scious, ordered, and organized life which it af- 
firms to be the preordained consummation of all 
history and all life. The undated antecedent life 
is expressed to us in the incarnation; the ages to 
come hail us in the resurrection of the Son of 
God. All the power and possibilities of eternity 
are conveyed to us in the intenseness of the life 
that makes its advent in the stable of Bethlehem 
and passes away from mortal vision over the sum- 
mit of the mount in the cloud that " received him 
out of their sight.'' All the hopes of all men cen- 
ter in his person. By right of his indefeasible re- 
lations to the world as "firstborn of the whole 
creation, ... in whom all things consist, " 
he gathers into himself the life of all the genera- 
tions, bears it with him into the abysses of death, 
and having thus by himself purged our sins rises 
again, disburdened, emancipated, glorified, and 
ascends up where he was before, a High Priest, 
the High Priest of the universe, according to the 
power of an indissoluble life. "The Lamb of 
God that taketh away the sins of the world," 
he is forevermore the only life and light of men. 

We can apply no canons of criticism to such 
statement of facts. It lies wholly beyond their 
range. We can trust no calculation of probabili- 
ties here. We can rely upon no inferences, no 



34 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

deductions. No element of uncertainty must en- 
ter to confuse our faith. We can suspend the 
issues of eternity involved in the reality and recti- 
tude of our relations to Him upon no other than 
"infallible proofs." The conscience - stricken 
world cries out for assured forgiveness. The 
groping, stumbling world, feeling its way in the 
dark, longs for light. The dying world in its 
agony of wretchedness pleads with unutterable 
groanings for life. Never has the promise been 
given it of forgiveness, life, light, except in Jesus 
Christ. It will not be content with aught less than 
the sure knowledge of him. It were a mockery 
to offer less. 

Among them that were born of women there 
had not risen a greater than John the Baptist, and 
he bare witness to the truth. But the question of 
man's accountability for the truth could not be re- 
ferred to the testimony of even John. He does 
not trust to his own insight or discernment or the 
sufficiency of his own faculties. " I knew Him 
not," he said. His witness is to that which had 
been communicated to him. It is hearsay. He 
refers his disciples to Jesus himself to find out 
who he is. He sent two of them, saying: "Art 
thou he?" He did all that any mere human wit- 
ness can ever do: he brought men to Christ. As- 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 35 

signing to him the foremost place in the ranks of 
the prophets — nay, elevating him above the pro- 
phetic level, "more than a prophet" — Jesus yet 
declined to trust his character and claims to his 
testimony. If the highest form of human knowl- 
edge, clarified by unimpeachable integrity of char- 
acter and broadened by intimate and familiar 
converse with the truest, most profound, and most 
far-reaching scriptures ever furnished for human 
counsel and instruction; if prophetic gifts beyond 
any ever bestowed upon sons of men; if an imme- 
diate commission charged with this special func- 
tion — if all these combined could not give absolute 
and final validity to testimon}^, to whom shall 
we go? 

Yet once more. It has already been said that 
the Son of God sent forth men as witnesses to 
himself after his ascension. The course of these 
lectures will later bring us to the consideration of 
the extent, meaning, and value of their testimony. 
It is enough to say now in anticipation that they 
did not commit the vindication of their gospel to 
the validity and sufficiency of their own state- 
ments. They were profoundly conscious of their 
own living, personal relations to their Lord; they 
were absolutely assured of the truthfulness of their 
presentation of his character and life — antecedent, 



36 THE WITNESSES, TO CHRIST. 

incarnate, and ascended. They were bold and 
pronounced in their avowal that they had received 
from the Lord himself their commission to preach 
him and authority to establish and regulate the 
affairs of his Church. Yet they refused to have 
or exercise dominion over the faith of men and 
knew nothing among them but Jesus Christ and 
him crucified, that their " faith should not stand in 
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." 
Their preaching was nothing unless it was " by 
[or in] the Holy Ghost sent forth from heaven." 
The " earthen vessels " were not taken account of. 
The word itself, as the very word of God, in dem- 
onstration of the Spirit and of power, was relied 
upon to work effectually in them that believe. It 
is the special characteristic of the apostolic minis- 
try that it was separated as widely as possible from 
the arts and resources of this world's wisdom, and 
that just in proportion to the completeness of this 
separation was the absoluteness of their conviction. 
When the demands of controversy with the Jews 
and heathen brought into play the subtleties of the 
intellectual faculties, heresies arose which, for the 
most part, formed themselves upon the incomplete 
or enfeebled apprehension of the person of the 
Son of God by the mere human understanding. 
The spiritual vision was dimmed, and the true wit- 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 37 

nesses — men who could not but speak the things 
which they had seen and heard — were relegated 
to comparative obscurity, while the Church visible 
and regnant set itself to defining the indefinable 
and explaining the inexplicable, asserted authority 
over the thoughts of men, became the tyrant of 
conscience, and ended by establishing a despotism 
in the realm of mind and faith unparalleled in his- 
tory and as far removed from the free and benefi- 
cent reign of the Son of God as the beast with 
seven heads and ten horns in John's vision is from 
the Lamb standing on Mount Sion. 

The times have changed. Protestantism has 
been at work and brought in freedom of thought 
and liberty of conscience. We worship where we 
will, as w r e will, and whom we will. Laxity of 
faith has taken the place of intolerance ; and the 
world says that it matters not what a man believes, 
only so that he be honest in his belief. Indiffer- 
entism is very largely the characteristic of the 
times. To this, with all the evil and clanger at- 
tendant, it may safely be said that tw r o things have 
contributed: first, the loss of the consciousness 
of sin; second, the loss of the vision of the Sav- 
iour. Sin has become only a synonym for vice 
or crime, and a pure morality has been substi- 
tuted for eternal life ; so that the tremendous 



38 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

forces expressed in the person and work of the 
Son of God are deemed wholly unnecessary, and 
the Saviour of the world is assigned an honor- 
ary place at the head and center of a social, intel- 
lectual, and aesthetic realm known as the Church, 
which he may adorn with his presence, but must 
not perturb, distress, and humiliate by the shame 
and horror of his cross. We have come perilous- 
ly near to reducing the Church of the Son of God, 
which he purchased with his own blood, to the 
level of a purely natural and human association 
for earthly purposes, dissolving its connections 
with eternity and eliminating the supernatural ele- 
ment from character and life. But there are 
still witnesses for him, men whose conversation 
is in heaven, whose life is hid with him in God, 
who have known sin and know the Saviour, and 
who in the knowledge of the only true God and 
of Jesus Christ whom he has sent have eternal 
life. Believing on the Son of God, they have 
the witness in themselves — a higher than any 
human witness — and when they testify the things 
which they have seen and heard, a truer and 
diviner than themselves confirms and effectuates 
their word. 

Thus in brief the attempt has been made to show 
that where the person and work of the Son of God 



THE INADEQUACY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 39 

are in question no mere human testimony is suffi- 
cient. He himself declines the best witness this 
world could offer, even while he declares that he 
bare witness to the truth. / must have, and have, 
greater witness than that of John. He was a light 
that consumed as it shone; and while the Jews for 
a season exulted in that light, it soon nickered and 
died away, and left the eternal verities of the per- 
son of the Son of God unlighted by any ray of 
human wisdom or excellency. Outside of that 
narrow circle of paling and fading glory there was 
no possible witness to the stupendous facts ex- 
pressed in the incarnation. The oracles oi hea- 
thenism are dumb. The votaries of the false faiths, 
like the priests of Baal, cry out in the bitterness of 
their passion, and torture themselves in their mad 
eagerness to evoke some response to their ques- 
tionings. Nature and God are alike silent. 
There is neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any 
that regardeth. Nature has no answer to give, 
and God is not to be worshiped by men's hands, 
nor invoked by the wild outcries of disappointed 
and wrathful sufferers. Philosophy has settled 
no question touching man's relation to the unseen, 
and offers no solution of the vexing problem of the 
reconciliation between the infinite and the finite, 
between God and the world. Science in its pro- 



4-0 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

foundest search and its widest reach has not 
touched the outskirts of that realm to which the 
Son of God belongs. The star of Bethlehem has 
gone out of its sky, and the countless host of the 
firmament still obscure the portals of light and 
make no pathway for our coming Judge. 

If we would satisfy our conscience and still the 
clamors of our heart, we must withdraw into the 
solitudes of the soul, look upon the transfigured 
Son of man, lift our inner eye to the bright cloud 
that settles down on him and all who are with 
him, and turn our inner ear to the voice that comes 
out of the cloud: "This is my beloved Son. 
Hear ye him." 



LECTURE II. 



THE CONJOINT TESTIMONY OF THE 

FATHER AND THE SON. 

(41) 



II. 



THE CONJOINT TESTIMONT OF THE FATHER 
AND THE SON. 

" I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that 
sent me beareth -witness of me." John viii. 18. 

ANOTHER order of witnesses, higher than 
any that this world could furnish, and appar- 
ently quite in keeping with the old order of di- 
vine movement, might have been called from that 
broad region of life that lies between the narrow- 
ness of our condition and the fullness of the God- 
head. Angels, by whom, as Stephen, Paul, and 
the Epistle to the Hebrews affirm, the word of the 
law was spoken, could have given strong confir- 
mation to the claims of him who is Lord over all. 
The intimacy of the relations of the Son of God 
with the eternal world, as well as his earnest de- 
sire and purpose to save men, would seem to sug- 
gest the enlistment of such agencies in his service. 
But our ways are not God's ways. Had he in- 
tended to effect his purpose by the display of 
wonders and extraordinary powers, nothing more 
would have been needed than the free employ- 
ment of these ministers of his that " excel in 

C43) 



44 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

strength." The sweep of the legions that were 
at the command of Christ would have given 
speedy settlement to all questions affecting his 
rights and powers. Indeed, he did not hesitate to 
declare his purpose to use them to the utmost lim- 
it in the final judgment and disposition of affairs, 
"when the Son of man shall come in his glory, 
and all the holy angels with him." They shall 
be the reapers, and theirs it shall be to sever the 
wicked from among the just, and deliver them 
over to the endurance of the penalty pronounced. 
But in the process of his incarnate life there was a 
marked avoidance of display and of all preternat- 
ural agencies that would lift himself above the 
normal conditions of human life and unduly af- 
fect the mind, the conscience, and the spiritual 
faculties of men. He had thrown the veil of the 
" likeness of sinful flesh " over the majesty of his 
person, and did not intend that it should be thrust 
aside by demon or angel while he tabernacled on 
earth. Only when it should be rudely rent in 
twain by human hands, and the way into the holi- 
est consecrated for us through his flesh, should 
men come into that presence. 

The seeming exceptions are rare. Angelic 
ministrations, under this economy, appear only 
when no other agency is available. Gabriel was 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 45 

sent to Zechariah to announce the birth of the 
forerunner and to Mary to declare that she 
should be the mother of the Christ. Angels sang 
to the shepherds the song of the advent, and sent 
them to Bethlehem to find in the manger the babe 
that should be "ruler in Israel." An angel of 
the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream to warn 
him of the danger to the infant Jesus, and again 
at the end of the sojourn in Egypt to bid him re- 
turn to the land of Israel. After the long struggle 
with the devil in the wilderness, angels came and 
ministered to Christ. After the agony in the gar- 
den an angel appeared to strengthen him. An 
angel roiled away the stone from the tomb on the 
morning of the resurrection, and announced the 
fact to the women who came to find his body. 
As messengers from the courts of heaven they 
came to bring the tidings of his birth and of his 
resurrection to the chosen few, and as minister- 
ing spirits they were at hand to sustain and com- 
fort when the flesh could no longer bear the 
weight of trial. But he never invoked them as 
witnesses, nor appealed to their appearance in his 
own behalf. On the one hand, the overpowering 
rush of angelic forces would have been hopelessly 
at variance with the moral and spiritual movement 
involved in and essential to human salvation; and, 



46 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

on the other, as concerning his own person, it 
was clearly his purpose to leave the settlement of 
the great question to the decision of the final and 
supreme tribunal, and appeal to his Father only 
in support of his claim. The dignity of his char- 
acter, and the immensity of the work that he was 
to do, demanded the sanction and indorsement of 
the highest authority, and with nothing less than 
this would he attempt to satisfy the souls of men. 

This seems to be a necessity when we consider 
that he refers his coming into the world, his work, 
his relations to men, his very affections and all the 
issues of his life in time and eternity, to the will of 
the Father and by utmost fullness and emphasis of 
statement makes him responsible for the whole. 
"The Father sent me." " I proceeded forth and 
came from God ; neither came I of myself, but he 
sent me." " I came down from heaven, not to do 
mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." 
(i My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, 
and to finish his work." "The words that I 
speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the 
Father that dwelleth in me; he doeth the works." 
"The Son can do nothing of himself, but what 
he seeth the Father do: for what things soever 
he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." 
From which he goes on to affirm the power to 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 47 

quicken the dead, and the authority to judge all 
men, as the Father's gift to him. His disciples 
were those whom the Father gave him, and "no 
man can come to me, except the Father which 
hath sent me, draw him." It is the Father's 
will that these should have everlasting life and 
that the Son should raise them up at the last 
day. His care and affection for those who came 
to him were because the Father gave them to him. 
"Thine they were, and thou gavest them me." 
" Those that thou gavest me I have kept." 

Exceptional prophetic utterance or achievement 
might make appeal to the minds of men by its 
wonder, or its high ethical quality. But here the 
entire life, in its beginnings, in its impulses and 
affections, in its purposes and issues, in all its rela- 
tions to God and men, to time and eternity, is re- 
ferred immediately and continuously to the will, 
the working, and the indwelling of the Father. It 
is not merely a manifestation of wonders and 
signs, nor of a supreme ethical quality and pur- 
pose. In the entire process of his inner and outer 
life and in its consummation, it is the embodied 
expression of the Father. The attestation of the 
Father himself was needed to command the faith 
of the world. The place he thus assumed and the 



48 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

work he undertook required the entire authority of 
the Godhead. 

On the one side, therefore, we must look for the 
most complete attestation that the Father could 
give to the Son ; and on the other, we must expect 
to find it not in outbursts of energy which may 
measure the almightiness of God, nor in the blaz- 
ing forth of splendors that may assert for the Son 
a glory passing that of all created things, but in 
the due and ordered ways of divine working, and 
under the restrictions and conditions of the incar- 
nate life to which he subjected himself. For 
without such reserve the process of divine mani- 
festation could not be brought into normal relation 
to the ethical character of men, and salvation 
would have been impossible. 

Do we not too often in our eagerness to rescue 
men make the mistake of longing for, and even 
appealing to, some abnormal, extraordinary move- 
ment in nature or life, some wonderful outcome 
of the order, the providential order of human af- 
fairs, as a truer and more satisfactory demonstra- 
tion of the presence and power of God among 
men, than daily life and the common course of 
events can furnish? We forget that the long 
series of seemingly insignificant circumstances, in- 
fluences, movements which bring about the great 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 49 

result are as truly under divine direction as the 
issue can be; and indeed that the failure to dis- 
cern him in the antecedents is almost certainly 
fatal to any ethical, saving result in the conse- 
quent. Do we not forget, too, how constantly 
and earnestly our Lord taught men to look for 
God in the ordinary course of nature and the triv- 
ial occurrences of common life? The grass of the 
field, the lily, the rock, the sand, the sparrow, the 
morning and the evening light, and all the vast va- 
riety of natural phenomena were so many syllables 
written by the finger of God, for the children of 
men to spell out. He refused the sign from heav- 
en, because, if they could not read the signs given 
in earth, how hopeless to expect them to interpret 
the mysterious symbols from the skies! " If I 
have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, 
how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly 
things?" We may put a due estimate upon such 
marvels as appear at Sodom and Sinai, and stand 
in awe in the presence of the possibilities of wrath 
and judgment declared in them ; but we shall, like 
Israel, put ourselves at greater distance from God, 
and beg to hear his voice no more. Such displays 
belong to an inferior economy, and make their ap- 
peal to the early generations and imperfectly de- 
veloped faculties. When the fullness of time was 



50 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

come and the period of childhood training was 
passed, God spoke in other forms and with fuller 
utterance. We therefore look for the sort of tes- 
timony most in agreement with the regular and 
uniform movement of God upon and among men 
and that most surely expresses his mind and pur- 
pose. The stars were not swung out of their 
courses to make a pathway for the coming of the 
Son of God. The angels of God worshiped him, 
but a woman's bosom was his first tabernacle here, 
and the swaddling clothes, the manger, and the 
surroundings of a simple country village tell of the 
reality and the lowliness of his human beginnings. 
As was his entrance, so was his career; and with- 
in these limitations he intended men to see the 
Father and to hear the voice of God. 

We may now read the meaning of the text: 
" I " that stand among you in human form " am 
he that beareth witness of myself ;" but not alone. 
" The Father that sent me beareth witness of me." 
The witness was joint and inseparable. The Son 
could not give witness of himself without the Fa- 
ther; nor could the Father bear witness without 
the Son. How interdependent they are, each 
upon the other, for the manifestation of himself, 
is evident in every instruction that Jesus gives con- 
cerning the Godhead. In connection with the 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 5 1 

assertion of his judicial power over the cities that 
repented not when he came to them, he utters his 
thanksgiving to the Father that the things about 
himself were not committed to the wisdom and 
prudence of men, but revealed to babes, and with- 
draws them from the sphere of human research by 
the declaration: "No man knoweth the Son, but 
the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, 
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will 
reveal him." Agreeing therewith, it is said in the 
beginning of the gospel of John: " No man hath 
seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, 
which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath de- 
clared him." For the understanding of himself, it 
is necessary that men should hear from the Father 
and learn — in the words of prophecy, " be taught 
of God " — so that, in his own words, " No man 
can come to me, except the Father which hath sent 
me draw him." In its most positive form he 
sums up and reiterates the truth among his later 
teachings: " I am the way, the truth, and the life. 
No man cometh unto the Father but by me. He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father. I am in 
the Father and the Father in me." Through all 
his course, while expending the wealth of divine 
wisdom and lavishing the resources of divine pow- 
er upon men, he charged them with sin because of 



52 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

their rejection of him, and referred it to their fail- 
ure to discern and understand God: "Ye know 
neither me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, 
ye should have known my Father also." 

It thus behooves us to consider that the Christ of 
our gospel is not a disclosure made on the human 
side of his life of certain characters of God, hith- 
erto unknown, which bring him into nearer rela- 
tionship to men than the world had believed pos- 
sible; rather he is the final and complete revelation 
of the Godhead. In him meet all the divine per- 
sonalities, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each 
witnessing to the other, and so bringing the full 
weight of divine authority for the confirmation of 
the truth by which men are saved. 

In my native city there is a Church of the de- 
nomination which refuses Jesus Christ his rightful 
place in the Godhead, with the inscription over its 
entrance: to pW 0ew, " To the only God." The 
inscription is misplaced. It belongs to the altars 
where all " men honor the Son even as they honor 
the Father." " Probably no philosophy was ever 
able to rest ultimately in the Deistic or Unitarian 
conception of God; that is to say, every attempt 
merely to regard the divine Being in simplicity as 
one has ended in Pantheism, or else has been 
obliged to develop into some multiformity, so as to 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 53 

bring God and the world into relation." What is 
true, as thus stated by a Bampton lecturer, of 
philosophy, applies with equal force to the ethical 
and practical side of human life. The conscience 
and the heart, when appealed to and charged with 
obligation and the fervor of devotion, will not be 
satisfied to answer the demand unless there be 
some attendant assurance that the relations upon 
which these depend belong to the life of the God 
who asserts his authority over us. They will only 
be felt as binding when we can trace them back 
to their antitypes and beginnings in the divine na- 
ture, and recognize them as reflections within our 
sphere and measure of elements and forces exist- 
ent in the Godhead. Our gospel does not offer 
us a God void of contents and colorless in the 
absolute simplicity of his being, in application to 
whom the terms Father and Son — or any other 
terms of relation — are meaningless, or have only 
figurative meaning, much too remote and indis- 
tinct to bring him within the life of men, though 
they be called sons. "The only God" of the 
gospel is continent of Fatherhood and Sonship in 
the unity of the Spirit. The exclusion of either is 
the denial of the only living and true God; for 
" whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not 
the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath the 



54 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

Father also." Wherever the interior relations of 
the Godhead are contemplated in the New Testa- 
ment — the Old Testament is out cf the question, 
because it does not claim to be a complete and 
final revelation of God or of aught else — and espe- 
cially in the writings of John, the distinction be- 
tween the absolute and indefinable term " God " 
and the relative, mutually dependent, and insepara- 
ble terms " Father" and " Son" is almost invari- 
ably observed. "No man hath seen God at any 
time ; the only begotten Son, which is in the bo- 
som of the Father, he hath declared him." It is 
almost the exact parallel of Paul's teaching of 
Christ to the Colossians, " Who is the image of the 
invisible God, the firstborn of every creature;" 
and of the writing to the Hebrews, " God . . . 
hath spoken unto us by his Son . . . the 
brightness of his glory, and the express image of 
his person." The truer rendering is, of course, 
that of the Revised Version, " the effulgence 
[shining forth] of his glory and the very image 
of his substance." 

Our Lord uses the term "Father" save when 
indicating his own relation to the Godhead as such, 
or when speaking to men the truths that affect their 
relations to God simply. "Not that any man 
hath seen the Father save he which is of God, he 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SOX. $5 

hath seen the Father." In the supreme crisis of 
his life, when the consciousness of human suffer- 
ing overlaid the consciousness of divine relations, 
he used the Old Testament speech: "My God, 
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" In the 
next moment his final triumph is signalized by the 
word, "Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit." So also we have the same result when we 
compare "I proceeded forth and came from 
God" with the expression "The only begotten 
Son, which is in the bosom of the Father." In all 
the New Testament God is " invisible," whom 
" no man hath seen, nor can see," " dwelling in 
the light which no man can approach unto." As 
the Father, in the inner distinctions and functions 
of the divine life, he is the fountain of Godhead 
from whom it eternally flows into the person of the 
Son, the express image of his substance, in and 
through whom all the glory of God shines forth, 
and by whom alone the counsels of God are made 
known and his purposes executed. 

It is not the occasion for a discussion, or even 
more than a cursory statement of the scriptural 
doctrine of the triune God. Nor is it intended to 
state it in the form of a " speculative opinion, a 
metaprrysical definition in scholastic dogma," but 
as a living truth, " a fact which transcends all ex- 



$6 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

perience, which is of no special time or place, 
which is eternal in the heavens. The substance 
of it is that there is one God, eternal, omnipotent, 
all-wise, all-good; and that this one God, taking 
into the account the inadequacies of human lan- 
guage and the poverty of human thought, is most 
correctly conceived of and spoken of as Father, 
Son, Spirit, as Three in One." 

So much is necessary that we may have under- 
standing of what our gospel teaches of God and 
of the nature and force of the testimony to which 
it makes appeal in behalf of the Son. 

1. The conjoint testimony of the Father and Son 
is in confirmation of the ancient monotheistic teach- 
ing of one God, Creator of all things. He is the 
absolutely inexhaustible Fountain and Source of 
being, motion, life. " In him we live, and move, 
and have our being." 

2. God is eternal. He is not under any limita- 
tion or reckonings of time or measurements of 
space. In the expressive phrase of Isaiah, he is 
the " high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." 

3. God is the Upholder and Director of all things. 
He preserves all things, assigns them their place 
and time, and orders and guards their movement. 
Not a sparrow falls to the ground without him. 

4. God is all-wise. In the ends that he proposes 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 57 

he is determined by the perfections of his own na- 
ture, and in his methods adjusts the resources of 
his illimitable domain to his purpose with absolute 
accuracy. 

5. God is all-good. He finds his own infinite 
delight in the exercise of his own energies as ex- 
pressive of kindly, orderly, and beneficent dispo- 
sitions, and in a measure repeats and reproduces 
himself in all the works of his hands. 

6. He is all-righteous. Rectitude is original 
with him, and the, order of the universe and the 
ethical consciousness and relations of intelligent 
beings are expressions in their proportion of his 
own sense and love of rightness. 

7. These are all elements in his self-conscious- 
ness, and find expression in his will and works, so 
declaring the invisible, illimitable, eternal God to 
be personal. The word may be inadequate, even 
defective. What human speech is adequate? 
What terms are not defective when we undertake 
to translate into forms of human thought the re- 
alities of the eternal life ? The things which Paul 
heard in the third heaven were unspeakable, not 
possible for a man to utter. How shall we hope, 
then, to give utterance to the characters of the life 
above all heavens, filling all things so that heaven 
and the heaven of heavens cannot contain him? 



58 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

Only, however inadequate* however defective the 
word may be, it is, in its use, the only word that 
expresses the highest essential character of intelli- 
gent, self-conscious being— -the highest order of 
being known, and, considering what we are, pos- 
sible to be known to us. The living God is by 
necessity of thought— shall I not rather say by 
necessity of consciousness?— to us the personal 
God. 

8. In entire agreement thus far with the old He- 
brew monotheism, the testimony of the gospel 
transcends that sphere and declares the one living 
and true God to be Father and Son. In a certain 
very real sense the term " Father " is applied to 
the relationship between God and men, and with 
greater intenseness of meaning and constant em- 
phasis in the Christian economy it is used to indi- 
cate the more intimate relation to God into which 
men are brought by Jesus Christ. "Ye are all 
the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." 
" Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the 
Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, 
Father." In these cases the relation is mediated 
by Jesus Christ. Only in the person of the Son 
of God is it immediate and expressive of essential 
and eternal oneness of nature and being. By 
every token the poetic and sentimental as well as 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 59 

the mediate and derivative sense of the term is ex- 
cluded, and the deeper reality of the original, es- 
sential, and eternal communication of the nature 
and substance of the Godhead from the Father to 
the Son declared in the testimony of the Father 
and the Son. Our Lord uses the name when 
speaking to his disciples of their place and inter- 
est in the divine administration. " Your Father 
knoweth that ye have need of these things." 
" How much more shall your heavenly Father give 
the Holy Spirit to them that ask him! " But he 
never gives them the place that he himself holds, 
and always refers their right to his own relation to 
them. They would never have known the Father 
but for him. " The only begotten Son, w T hich is in 
the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." 
He was their Father only as he was first his own 
and as they were his." " I ascend unto my Fa- 
ther, and your Father " — just as he discloses their 
relation to the Godhead through himself — " to my 
God, and your God." His own Father and God 
first and supremely, and theirs because they were 
his. 

9. In the economy of the Godhead, while the 
Father is the Fountain of all being and energy, he 
does nothing but by the Son. Whether known as 
the Word (Logos), the Image of the invisible 



60 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

God, or the Son, by him were all things made, 
and without him was not anything made that hath 
been made. In him all things consist, and he up- 
holdeth all things by the word of his power. So 
complete is the unity, so exhaustive the relation 
that "what things soever the Father doeth, these 
the Son also doeth in like manner," until in the 
final event, the spiritual quickening of men, the 
resurrection of the dead and the universal judg- 
ment shall complete the purpose of God, and the 
Son shall finish the work which the Father hath 
given him to do. 

10. The testimony further and finally declares 
that the revelation is made, not to satisfy human 
desire for knowledge, to elevate and enlarge the 
intellectual capabilities of men, but that the world 
might be saved. " He shall save his people from 
their sins," was the preannounced meaning of his 
coming; that repentance and remission of sins 
should be preached in his name was his own final 
interpretation of his life to his disciples. 

These statements may give us the clue to the 
nature of the testimony borne to the world in this 
behalf. To appreciate it we ought to take ac- 
count of what is offered to our acceptance and 
faith outside the Christian sphere. It must not, 
however, be forgotten that the living God, though 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 6l 

he suffered all nations to walk in their own ways, 
yet left not himself without witness among them, 
and that the Word "was the true Light, which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 
There have, therefore, always been elect souls, 
seekers after God, among the Gentiles, who, hav- 
ing not the law, have done the things contained 
in the law, and " shall come from the east and the 
west and from the north and the south, and shall 
sit down in the kingdom of God." How many 
or how few, God only knows. They are enough 
to have a special place assigned them, in the rec- 
ords of God's revelation and must be excluded 
from our estimate of the antichristian or unchris- 
tian world. 

For the rest, the story of heathen thought and 
worship is given in brief but terrible statement in 
the beginning of the Epistle of Paul to the Ro- 
mans. When they knew God they repressed the 
knowledge in their impiety and unrighteousness, 
and refused to glorify him as God. The natural 
and inevitable consequence came upon them in 
vain and false conceptions and darkened and im- 
bruted understanding. Then followed the fear- 
ful degeneracy into idolatry, with all its attendant 
abominations and perversions and abuse of nature 
until God gave them over to a reprobate mind, a 



62 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

rejected, worthless reason, incapable of discern- 
ing the things that were befitting. By their fruits 
they are known. This witness is true. Heathen- 
ism to-day, except where it has been touched and 
modified by Christian influence, is as Paul de- 
scribed it. Not all the genius of poetry can trans- 
mute this dense darkness into light. The subtlest 
and most thorough philosophical research must 
fail to discover any true conception of God, or of 
aught that should be worshiped in all the systems 
of faith and service in heathendom. Gods many 
and lords many, naturalism, dualism, polytheism, 
fetichism, agnosticism, pantheism, and fate, with 
their kindred moral or immoral qualities and 
their appropriate social environment, you will find 
in all these lands; and it may be, here and there, 
at wide intervals, among the countless symbols of 
false worship, an altar obscurely placed with the 
unintelligible inscription, " To the Unknown 
God." It is the witness of a divine retribution 
upon the alienated heart of the nations. 

Within the compass of Christian light it is no 
less true that "whosoever denieth the Son, the 
same hath not the Father." Divorce the two, re- 
fuse to the Son the place given him in the gospel in 
the economy of the divine life, and there is left a 
purely intellectual conception of God, a meta- 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 6 



physical abstraction which makes no appeal to the 
heart, does not satisfy the conscience, and com- 
mands no worship. When men import into the 
term all that the culture and inevitable Christian 
atmosphere of our later times compel them to in- 
clude in it, and strip it of the anthropomorphisms 
which they so much dread and of the accidents of 
human thought, God passes into the region of the 
things that cannot be known or even thought. 
Agnosticism is the boast of abysmal ignorance to 
which men of our day have descended. If not 
absolutely " without God," certainly without God 
in the world. 

Another form of the effort to satisfy the demand 
of the mind for God, is found in the deism which 
recognizes the existence of a First Cause whose 
interest in and connection with the affairs of cre- 
ated things ceased when they were fixed in their 
ordained paths and furnished with the laws ac- 
cording to which they should proceed. 

Pantheism, in its purest form, as given by Spi- 
noza, recognizes God as the only substance and 
the sum total of things as God. The distinction 
between the Creator and his works is abolished; 
or, properly speaking, there could be no works 
and no creation. As there is no God apart from 
nature, nature must be eternal, or the element of 



64 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

eternity must be eliminated from the conception 
of God. Personality may not be predicated. 

Positivism refuses any place in the realm of 
human knowledge for metaphysical and theolog- 
ical conceptions, sneers at the absolute and uncon- 
ditioned, the unknown and unknowable of agnos- 
ticism, and then turns upon itself and erects its 
temples and altars and offers its worship to a hazy 
apotheosized humanity, which may mean an ideal 
conception of the race, in the highest possibilities 
of its total being, or something of Carlisle's hero 
worship, a calendar of select positive saints, or the 
actual life of humanity in all its phases and in all 
its stages, with its sins and its sorrows, its weak- 
nesses and its woes, its aspirations, its heroic 
achievements, its failures, its degradation, and its 
utter and hopeless humiliation in death. It refuses 
the worship due to the one faultless and perfect 
type and ideal of all human and divine excellence 
and glorifies the tarnished reputation of men who 
have long since rotted in the grave and left but an 
indistinct memory. The incense of that worship 
is the scent of the charnel house. 

It is needless to recount the varieties of specula- 
tion and theory upon which men have fallen in 
due retribution for their abandonment of historic 
fact and divine revelation. They furnish material 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 65 

for intellectual exercise for the few, and have no 
practical significance except as they turn men 
away from the truth and lead to hardness of heart 
and reprobacy of mind. It is with the practical 
side of the question that we are specially con- 
cerned. For what we see and know is that as 
men refuse to " honor the Son as they honor the 
Father' 7 the deeper and truer ethical distinctions 
are lost, the finer and purer moral qualities give 
way to conventional and secular estimates, con- 
science adjusts itself to its environment and sin is 
no more felt to be exceeding sinful. The only 
link of connection between the divine and human, 
the eternal and the temporal, is broken, and the 
world, eccentric, swings away from its orbit, and 
sweeps on into the unexplored and pathless regions 
of outer darkness. In its bitterness of woe the 
heart cries out, but there is no answer. The way 
to the throne is lost. No rigor of Stoicism, no 
careless epicurean vaunt, will suffice in the crises 
of human experience. When the horrors of the 
present time and the awe of the dreadful future 
are upon us we want to look into the face and hear 
the voice of One who can answer our desperate 
demand, " Show us the Father" with the uner- 
ring truth and divine authority of the Son: " He 

that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 
5 



66 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

Let us turn again to our testimony and see upon 
what this truth and authority rest. It assumes 
that there is a possibility of direct communication 
between God and man. It is against all the teach- 
ing that has elevated, inspired, and given hope to 
men that God may be known and reached only by 
argument and inference. The witness is that he 
is so near akin to us, that we are so truly made in 
his image that by normal and congenial methods 
real converse may be had between him and us. 
Like almost every other great truth, it was flashed 
out in syllables through the darkness of human 
history under the old dispensation; and a few 
men, the prophets of the future, read them and 
lived by them. Sometimes, as when the angels 
came to Abraham at Mamre, in living form he 
appeared and talked with men "asa man with his 
friend." Sometimes, as on cloud-girt and light- 
ning-guarded Sinai, he came with all the apparel 
and attendance of nature in her most majestic as- 
pect, and in tones as awful and far-reaching as 
i( the voice of mighty thunderings " proclaimed 
his presence and his lav/. Now in the distinct but 
undefined speech to the Chaldean, Abram, and 
now in the still small voice to the prophet in the 
solitude of Horeb, he gives command to go on 
their missions of world-wide import. In whatever 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 67 

way of approach, or with whatever voice he spake, 
to those who heard him all things thenceforth had 
a new meaning. Life had a sanctity and a glory 
before unknown. Like the patriarch at Bethel 
they said: " The Lord is in this place." They 
read his words in nature, and the heavens and the 
earth were full of his glory. God was not afar 
off, but nigh at hand — nearer than their own 
thoughts. In the word of a still higher inspiration 
he was " over all and through all and in them all." 
To this answered a faculty in men capable of 
hearing his voice and a spirit to understand him. 
" There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of 
the Almighty giveth them understanding." The 
sin of the world then as now was that seeing they 
saw not and hearing they heard not, neither did 
they understand with their heart. The seers and 
prophets interpreted him to the world, and the 
world received not their word. That these were 
exceptional instances does not militate against the 
assumption that the faculty itself is human — is 
not the exclusive property of any class or of any 
individuals, but belongs to man as man. There 
are exceptional developments of faculty in art. 
Michael Angelo and Raphael are not specimens of 
the average man. Only one in a century — in ten 
centuries, it may be — attained to their insight, to 



68 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

their breadth, power, and accuracy of vision, to 
their skill, their perfect use of their faculties. 
But nobody looks beyond the normal quality and 
possibility of human nature for the explanation of 
their genius and the interpretation of their work. 
It was precisely because they were more profound- 
ly human, more thoroughly identified with the very 
spirit and substance of our humanity than the rest 
of us that they were able to do so much. Their 
kinship with all men, with man as man, developed 
in them faculties that lay latent in others and en- 
abled them to appeal to rudimentary organs and 
possibilities of inner sense of which men would, 
but for such as they were, have been forever un- 
conscious. 

That there was something more than the merely 
natural, material, visible — what the cant of later 
days calls the positive — in such wonders of art as 
the " Transfiguration," the " Last Judgment " on 
the wall of the Sistine Chapel, and the more than 
heroic figure of Moses at the tomb of Julius II. is 
freely conceded. It is just in proportion as they 
quicken within us the sense of the supernatural 
that their real beauty and power are appreciated ; 
and it was because these masters were conscious 
that at bottom, in his innermost consciousness, man 
is linked to the eternal and when, even for a mo- 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 69 

ment, relieved from the oppression of the material 
and sensuous instinctively reaches after the un- 
seen and the infinite, that they dared to attempt 
through the forms of art the expression, or at least 
the suggestion of divine things. The response to 
their appeal we know. By the same tests we try 
all who claim the Master's degree in the world of 
arts, letters, or, it may be said reverently, religion. 
The human appeal is never complete until it is re- 
enforced and supplemented by the divine. The 
divine call can never attract and save unless it 
come by natural channels and reach the normal 
faculties of our humanity. 

It is in keeping with this that no stress is laid 
upon any specific form of divine manifestation un- 
der the economy of preparation. Angelic minis- 
try under aspects little if at all variant from those 
of our humanity; voices indistinguishable from hu- 
man utterance; natural phenomena; the cloud that 
covered the tabernacle and filled the temple; the 
visions to patriarch, seer, and prophet; dreams; 
and the insensible and indefinable movement upon 
the spirit that would admit no answer and would 
not be resisted — any and all ways by which man 
might be approached without violence done to his 
nature were indifferently used. It seems to have 
been the purpose of God to link himself in human 



70 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

thought and sentiment with every form of nature 
and every feature of our environment, to make us 
feel 

A presence that disturbs us with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. 

If abnormal and extraordinary agencies were 
employed, it was rather for wrath and judgment, 
as in Sodom's ruin and the destruction of the As- 
syrian army, when the saving work was no longer 
in contemplation; and even then the awful stroke 
was given apparently through such exceptional 
agencies of nature as these " ministers of his that 
excel in strength" could command. The light- 
nings of God's heaven, the volcanic forces of 
earth, the swiftly walking pestilence, and even the 
sword of the nations, told — as they still tell to men 
who will hear — that God is " over all and through 
all." 

In all these the essential was to reach the con- 
science and the heart. For, first of all, the ethical 
conviction is a disclosure of God. The sense of 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 7 1 

obligation and the sense of responsibility which 
enter into the constitution of the conscience are 
inseparable from the conviction of divine relations. 
I can do no better here than quote the words of 
the Bishop of Durham (Lightfoot) when, dwelling 
upon the language of his great predecessor, Bish- 
op Butler, in the last moments of his life: " It is 
an awful thing to appear before the Moral Gov- 
ernor of the world," he said. "The same 
thought which thus accompanied him in his pas- 
sage to eternity had dominated his life in time — 
this consciousness of an Eternal Presence, this 
sense of a Supreme Righteousness, this conviction 
of a Divine Order, shaping, guiding, disposing all 
the intricate vicissitudes of circumstance and all 
the little lives of men — enshrouded now in a dark 
atmosphere of mystery, revealing itself only in 
glimpses through the rolling clouds of material 
existence, dimly discerned by the dull and partial 
vision of finite man, questioned, doubted, denied 
by many, yet visible enough even now to the eye 
of faith, working patiently but working surely, 
vindicating itself ever and again in the long results 
of time, but awaiting its complete and final vindi- 
cation in the absolute issues of eternity; the truth 
of all truths, the reality of all realities, the one 
stubborn, steadfast fact, unchangeable while all 



72 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

else is changing; this Presence, this Order, this 
Righteousness, in the language of Holy Scripture, 
this Word of the Lord, which shall outlive the 
solid earth under foot and the starry vault over- 
head." It was under the resistless pressure of 
that same dominating conviction that Bishop But- 
ler wrote of " the Author and Cause of all things, 
who is more intimately present to us than anything 
else can be, and with whom we have a nearer and 
more constant intercourse than we can have with 
any creature." 

Both the great bishops were right. For con- 
science, our ethical faculty, deals chiefly with the 
rectitude by which man is put in relation not only 
with his fellows, but primarily with God. The 
changing values of our nature can furnish no fixed 
standards of the worth of what we are or what we 
do; and obligation, withdrawn from its divine re- 
lations, is emptied of all notion of authority, de- 
termined by sentiment or sensitiveness and meas- 
ured by utilitarian or hedonistic views, or instincts 
of the individual or society. Responsibility is re- 
ferred to no absolute law and looks to no righteous 
account and estimate of ourselves under that law; 
but emerges only at the call of an armed public 
opinion, stirred into activity by the solicitations of 
self-interest. No data of ethics will suffice for the 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 73 

demands of conscience that do not include as their 
first postulate a righteous Ruler who orders the af- 
fairs of men with an absolute authority, and reveals 
himself to us as the Supreme Judge, from whose 
decisions there is no appeal. The first recorded 
utterance of God to man was in the exercise of 
authority and the announcement of law: "Thou 
mayest" and "Thou shalt not." The next ap- 
proach was in the enforcement of penalty and the 
establishment of new conditions of life upon the 
same basis of inexorable righteousness. Nor has 
he ever since come to men, Job of old and Peter 
of later time in the presence of that awful majesty 
being witnesses, without producing such conviction 
of absolute rectitude as reduced to hideous defor- 
mity their highest ideal of individual and personal 
righteousness. Nor on the other hand has there 
ever been such a conviction of righteousness with- 
out that awful sense of the presence of the right- 
eous God. The sense of righteousness, a true 
conscience, is God's first revelation of himself to 
every man. 

In final realization of such intimations the first 
disclosures of the Son of Man were in the realm of 
conscience. He took in hand the work of the Bap- 
tist, and repeating his call to repentance, sent it 
sounding into hitherto unexplored depths of human 



74 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

consciousness. He translated law into life, the 
letter into the spirit, swept away the " shadow r of 
things to come," and brought into full relief the 
"very image/' He refused the standard of con- 
ventionalisms and filled out and perfected the in- 
adequate and imperfect requirements of the Mosaic 
institute. He opened up in the way of beatitude 
possibilities of inward righteousness and perfect 
life absolutely independent of all environment until 
men began to feel that of a truth the kingdom of 
heaven was at hand. His person and his work ex- 
hibited such a complete embodiment and exercise 
of righteousness that hypocrisy was aghast and 
gnashed its teeth against him, and true and honest 
souls were abashed and awed, and joined in the 
cry and confession of Peter, " Depart from me, O 
Lord! for I am a sinful man!" Legal formulas, 
rabbinical pretensions, philosophical subtleties, and 
ethical theories vanish away in the presence of 
this incarnation of the righteousness of God. 
From that time, in spite of the cross and the 
grave — or rather shall we not say because of them ? 
— and in spite of all the arrogance of this world's 
wisdom, the awakened conscience falls in his pres- 
ence with the adoring cry: "My Lord and my 
God." Righteousness is felt to be the attribute 
and manifestation of the personal — the only living 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 75 

and true God, and is revealed perfectly only in 
Jesus Christ whom he has sent. 

Again, the very relation of Father and Son, one 
and inseparable, declares the inherent quality, the 
essential attribute, of the divine nature to be love. 
" The Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all 
things that himself doeth." The partial and finite 
affection which finds expression in the best forms 
and highest relations of our human life are but 
blurred shadows of the real, true, and infinitely 
perfect love in the interior life of the Godhead. 
The oneness of being and attribute, the eternal 
communication to the Son of all the energy and 
excellence of the Father, pass our human knowl- 
edge. But in this is the ground and motive of all 
divine movement in the creation, and still more ex- 
plicitly in our redemption. " God is love:" in 
himself, for the Father loveth the Son; and 
through the Son, in all his relations to the world, 
" for God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son." It was impossible to repress the 
Father's relation to men and put that name upon 
their lips without quickening in them the sense of 
the love inherent in it. Through all the channels 
of the incarnate life there came to the world such 
streams of sympathy, such volumes of tender af- 
fection, such wealth of devotion and self-sacrifice 



76 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

as had never been imagined in the loftiest nights 
of philanthropy or called out by the urgencies of 
the most intimate affection. His entire life, with- 
in and without, was a sacrifice, on one side, to 
the will of the Father which sent him ; and on the 
other, to his love for those whom the Father gave 
him. The incarnation of the Son is the absolutely 
perfect expression of the Father's love. There- 
fore said John, " He that loveth not, knoweth not 
God; for God is love; " and therefore we may 
say that the truest and fullest revelation of God is 
made when " the love of God is shed abroad in 
the heart." The order given is a true one. Right- 
eousness is first. God could not be love were he 
not righteous. Conscience must first consent to 
the law and principle of eternal rectitude before 
it can recognize and appreciate the reality and 
wealth of divine love. 

The First Epistle of John, supposed by many 
to have been written as a kind of preface or intro- 
duction to his Gospel, brings out the light of rev- 
elation as expressed in these two, righteousness 
and love. They are never disjoined. Righteous- 
ness demands the propitiation; righteous love fur- 
nishes it. The righteous propitiation is the Advo- 
cate of the sinner with the loving Father. And 
the heart of the forgiven sinner is quickened into 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 77 

love and has the assurance that it has passed from 
death unto life. Thus again, by conjoint testimo- 
ny, the Father and Son in their perfect oneness in 
love and by their manifestation and communica- 
tion of righteous love through the incarnate Son 
reveal each the other. " He that dwelleth in love 
dwelleth in God." 

The incarnation of the Son of God is the his- 
torical expression to the world of the intimate re- 
lations between God and the spirit of man, and 
the direct and immediate intercourse between 
them. " In the likeness of sinful flesh, " he 
reaches the entire body of human faculties, and 
through these regularly constituted channels de- 
livers truth, righteousness, and love in such full- 
ness and with such energy as can fail of effect 
only when the channels are obstructed, the facul- 
ties deadened. It may be questioned if God 
could have spoken fully and finally to the under- 
standing, the conscience, and the heart of men 
except through the divinely ordered ways of hu- 
man relationship. The flesh may have been as 
the veil of the temple concealing the glory of the 
indwelling presence ; but from behind the veil the 
voice of God was heard. Certainly the only 
way into the holiest is the new and living one 
through the vail, his flesh. The Word became 



8 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST, 



flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his 
glory. The personal life of our humanity is 
brought through the incarnate Son into due and 
direct relation and converse with God. To the 
opened sense the Father reveals the Son; to the 
pure in heart the Son brings the vision of God. 

The Gospels record two instances of special 
and direct testimony given by the Father: one at 
his baptism, the other at the transfiguration. In 
these two special instances the whole line of di- 
rect testimony of the Father culminates, and, in 
agreement with its personal character, finds ex- 
pression in articulate utterance. It is again and 
again the Word made manifest. "Jesus cometh 
from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be bap- 
tized of him." In his own words, " Thus it bc- 
cometh us to fulfill all righteousness." Thus it 
became John to fulfill his ministry by the commu- 
nication through its ordained rite of all its prerog- 
ative and power to his great successor. " There 
cometh one after me mightier than I." The pro- 
phetic function, which as to its old economic form 
and character had its consummation in John, was 
by him transmitted to Jesus. The word of the 
Baptist, " Repent," was also the first word of the 
Son of Man. Thus it became him to receive the 
investment by recognized ordinance with all the 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 79 

function and power of the old dispensation inten- 
sified and spiritualized by the descent of the Spir- 
it, which remained upon him. It was his inaugu- 
ration into and endowment for his prophetic and 
mediatorial ministry. Something more than the 
highest priestly and prophetic authority was need- 
ed for such an investiture. As in reference to 
John's witness he said, " I receive not testimony 
from man;" so here he would say, "I receive 
not authority from man." The Spirit was to 
John the token, as he himself declared, referring 
to the divine Word that had commissioned him: 
" He that sent me to baptize with water, the same 
said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spir- 
it descending, and remaining on him, the same is 
he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." But 
for the final authentication of his mission this was 
not sufficient for the Son of God. To meet his 
demand, the heavens were divided, the veil that 
covered the holy place of the Most High was torn 
asunder, and from within in articulate utterance 
came the word that summed up all the revelation 
of law and prophecy, of nature and history: 
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased. The complete conjunction of the divine 
and human in the person of the Jesus who re- 
ceived baptism at John's hands was declared; 



SO THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

and the incarnation of the Son of God was af- 
firmed as the ground of his authoritative ministry 
to the world. 

Once again when the disclosure of his divine 
Sonship had been made and received as never be- 
fore, and he was about to enter the shadows that 
deepened upon him as he went down into the val- 
ley of humiliation, he withdrew himself with cho- 
sen disciples into the mountain solitudes of Hermon 
and was " transfigured before them." It was not 
now the dove, as the visible symbol of the Spirit 
remaining upon him and declaring his endowment 
for his ministry, but the majesty of his own per- 
son, breaking in its splendor through the flesh and 
even the homely garb of his human form, that 
proclaimed the intimacy of his relation with the 
eternal world. But for that sacrificial ministry to 
which he had devoted himself, and which was the 
theme of converse with prophet and lawgiver and 
the reason and explanation of this manifestation 
of his glory, he required once again the seal and 
attestation of his Father. The " bright cloud " — 
the shekinah of the old covenant, in whose pres- 
ence the high priest offered the blood of atone- 
ment, and from which he received the word of 
absolution for the people — overshadowed them, 
and from it came the voice that had been heard 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 8 1 

on the banks of the Jordan, " This is my beloved 
Son; hear him." Most appropriately Peter, 
whose perplexed mind above all others needed 
such settlement, turns back to this scene in his 
later years as the confirmation of his faith: " We 
have not followed cunningly devised fables, when 
we made known unto you the power and coming 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses 
of his majesty. For he received from God the 
Father honor and glory, when there came such a 
voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my 
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And 
this voice which came from heaven we heard, 
when we were with him in the holy mount." 

The complement and completion of this authen- 
tication of his mission and work as High Priest is 
given in those last days when the horror of the 
cross had begun to vex and trouble his soul: 
" Now is my soul troubled ; and what shall I say? " 
Here, too, as at the baptism and the transfigura- 
tion, his prayer broke the silence of the heavens 
and the response of the Father comes in terms 
that he interpreted for the sake of those that stood 
by him: " I have both glorified it, and will glorify 
it again." 

All these are but signs like every divine work 
within the sphere of time and sense, and signify to 



82 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

us the presence and working of God in the person 
of his Son in our flesh. They are only needful to 
complete the round of divine testimonies, and as- 
sure us that there is no way of approach to our 
nature by which God has not come, and to con- 
firm our belief that Jesus, the man of Nazareth, 
is the Son of God, and that believing we may have 
life in his name. 

In conclusion the sum of the things spoken is: 
( i ) That the final appeal of Jesus Christ in the 
authentication of his person and mission is to the 
Father; (2) that the Father and Son witness each 
to the other and that their testimony is conjoint 
and not separate — so that no man cometh to the Son 
except the Father draw him, and no man cometh 
to the Father but by the Son; (3) that the testi- 
mony agrees with the monotheistic teaching of the 
Hebrew Scriptures in their affirmation of one per- 
sonal, eternal Creator and Upholder of all things, 
all-wise, all-righteous, and all-good; (4) that this 
witness transcends and completes the antecedent 
revelation in declaring the personality of the Fa- 
ther, Son, and Spirit in the unity of the Godhead; 
(5) that it reveals the Son as the exhaustive ex- 
pression of the Father's will, and executor of his 
purpose; (6) that this entire manifestation and in- 
carnation of God contemplates the salvation of 



TESTIMONY OF THE FATHER AND THE SON. 83 

men: (7) and finally, that this testimony presup- 
poses the possibility of God's approach to man, 
and faculties in man capable of receiving and re- 
sponding to divine communications. In the integ- 
rity and normal and healthful exercise of these 
faculties is the knowledge of God, man's eternal 
life assured; and to quicken and restore them to 
full activity is the purpose of the incarnation. " I 
am come that they might have life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly. " 



LECTURE III. 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 

(85) 



III. 

THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 

"The -words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but 
the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me 
that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me 
for the very works' sake." John xiv. 10, II. 

THE conjoint testimony of Father and Son given 
out of the heavens and on the side of the 
ethical and spiritual life has formal expression in 
and is corroborated by the works of Jesus. The 
end that he proposes is the same in both. He aims 
to establish faith in himself not merely as the ex- 
ponent and interpreter of the truth of God and ex- 
pression of the power of God, but as the embodi- 
ment and final and complete revelation of God to 
the world. He refuses to be considered apart 
from the Father, in the energies and activities of 
his life as well as in his being and self- conscious- 
ness. "I speak not of myself:" "the Father 
that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." On 
the one side, the medium of expression and chan- 
nel of conveyance of the divine power is the hu- 
man personality of Jesus Christ, and the sphere of 

operation is that to which the life of man belongs 

(87) 



88 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

and is limited ; on the other, the works are such 
and such only as become him for whom are all 
things and by whom are all things. They are to 
be recognized as the doing of the Father, and 
because of the works themselves he is to be be- 
lieved. 

i. The term that he uses, including his teachings 
as well as his actions, indicates that he viewed 
them not as exceptional and extraordinary, but as 
the natural and fitting expression of his character. 
To others they seemed to be wonders, miracles, 
mighty works; to himself there was no wonder, 
nothing that was not in perfect harmony with his 
own nature working under the conditions to which 
he had subjected himself. They bore the same re- 
lation to his person, as the life and speech of any 
man to the quality and faculties of his nature. If 
there was any miracle, it was in himself and his 
presence in the midst of this human environment, 
and not in li his works." 

2. At times, viewing his life in its entirety as 
planned and ordered of his Father, he uses the 
word in the singular number. " My meat is . . . 
to finish his work." " I have finished the work 
thou gavest me to do." All the single and distinct 
exercises of his power were only so many parts of 
a complete purpose which he was to accomplish. 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 89 

3. His work and his works were such and such 
only as the Father gave him to do. They did not 
originate with the occasions that called them forth; 
rather, the occasions were prepared for the work- 
ing. " Neither hath this man sinned, nor his par- 
ents, that he was born blind; but that the works 
of God should be made manifest in him/' Nor 
did they take their impulse from the affections of 
his human nature or the solicitations of human 
need. The affections themselves were but the 
outcome — the translation into human forms of ex- 
pression — of divine qualities, divine love and right- 
eousness, directed upon the subjects of the eternal 
thought of the Father and objects of his infinite 
solicitude and care. It is impossible to find terms 
to convey more explicitly, directly, and fully the 
divine origin and meaning of all that he did than 
those which he used. " The will of him that sent 
me." " His work." " The works that the Fa- 
ther hath given me." " The Son can do nothing 
of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for 
what things soever he doeth, these also doeth 
the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, 
and showeth him all things that himself doeth." 
It is only as he looks into the mind and will of the 
Father, and is continuously recipient of his cease- 
less, inexhaustible energy that he does his work. 



90 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

His whole life in its fullness, and each part of it, 
active or passive, outward or inward, are referred 
to the same intimate, unbroken, divine relation, 
and the perfect intercommunion between the Fa- 
ther and the Son. What he seeth — as he only can 
see "who is in the bosom of the Father" — the 
Father doing, he doeth. 

4. His work was the continuation to its comple- 
tion of the work of his Father. " My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work." " The works that 
the Father hath given me that I should finish them 
— the very works that I am doing." To bring to 
completion, to perfect the work that has been go- 
ing on through the ages was the business of his 
incarnate life. The great purpose that had had 
its first announcement in creation, was declared 
in the order and movement of the worlds — the 
xoGfiog — was expressed under providential direc- 
tion in the historic development of the race, and 
was spoken out in divers portions and in divers 
manners by the prophets, was to find its fulfillment 
and final disclosure in the life, speech, labors, and 
sufferings of the Son of Man. "I have finished 
the work thou gavest me to do." Beyond this 
nothing remained but to interpret that life to the 
ages to come, and to gather up and conserve its 
results. 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 91 

5. His life and work were to find their consum- 
mate result, first in the offer of salvation to all men, 
according to his own interpretation of his suffer- 
ings and resurrection given by St. Luke, "Thus 
it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the 
dead: . . . and that repentance and remis- 
sion of sins should be preached in his name among 
all nations;" and second, in the revelation of the 
salvation in the last day, according to the words 
of the apostle Peter, or in his own language, 
when " the Son of man shall come in the glory of 
his Father with his angels, and . . . reward 
every man according to his works." 

For more explicit understanding of their char- 
acter and purpose it may be best to take account, 
first, of his work as a whole, and then of his 
works in relation to the whole and himself. First, 
his entire work, if in pursuance and completion of 
the divine purpose and plan, must give to the 
world, 

1. The revelation of God in its fullness. By 
reason of his personal relation to the Father, he 
claims the exclusive right and pow r er to declare 
God. The divine nature, God as God, has never 
become the subject of direct knowledge to men. 
Various manifestations had been made under man- 
ifold forms and symbols; and from the works of 



92 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST, 

creation and utterances through the prophets, men 
had come to partial knowledge, but never to the 
immediate perception of God. "No man hath 
seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, 
which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath de- 
clared him." That directness and fullness of 
vision belongs only to him who is of God. He 
does not fail to make his disciples know that 
such a revelation of God is not possible except 
upon conditions of personal attachment and obe- 
dience to himself. Whatever discoveries men 
may make by natural reason through the things 
that are made and by prophetic teachings, they 
cannot come to the higher and complete knowl- 
edge of God without the manifestation of the Son ; 
and this is the exclusive right of them that love 
him and keep his commandments. " He that 
loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will 
love him, and will manifest myself to him." To 
all such he says : " He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father." When to this he adds to the prom- 
ise of the Comforter — Advocate — whom he would 
send from the Father, the Spirit of truth which 
proceedeth from the Father, who should testify of 
him, who should take the things that were his and 
show them to his disciples, it is evident that he in- 
tended to exhaust the possibilities of the revelation 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 93 

of God and to make it all dependent absolutely 
upon himself. His person was the radiant center 
from which the effulgence of the glory of the Fa- 
ther should proceed, and only as the Spirit of 
truth should testify of him could he make men to 
know of God. "All things that the Father hath 
are mine : therefore said I, that he shall take of 
mine, and shall show it unto you." 

It was not intended by our Lord to disavow or 
undervalue that manifestation of God in men, and 
understanding of the eternal power and Godhead, 
by the things that are made which St. Paul affirms, 
nor to depreciate the Hebraic revelations of him. 
These were the foundations upon which he built. 
If they had not been already furnished to his hand, 
he would have been constrained to set them forth 
first. For the conception of the eternal power 
and Godhead is the logical and necessary antece- 
dent in thought and consciousness to the final rev- 
elation of God in Christ — God the Father, Son, 
and Spirit. Hence he not only assumes the truth- 
fulness and reality of these former revelations, but 
appeals to them in confirmation of his own. The 
God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob is the 
God with whom he identifies himself and whose 
purpose and power he exemplifies and fulfills. 
The God of the prophets of whom it is said, "All 



94 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

thy children shall be taught of God," is the God 
whose teaching brings men to him. 

There is a tacit admission of a true recognition 
of God among the Gentiles when he gives assur- 
ance that from the north and the south, from the 
east and the west, they shall come and sit down in 
the kingdom of God. The ethical and practical 
value of these revelations is beyond all reckoning. 
Perverted, abused, and discarded as they so large- 
ly were, they yet furnished the only available 
measure of men's worth, the only ethical standard 
remaining among men, and the only sufficient in- 
centive and impulse to higher and truer living. 
At the same time the intimations of immortality 
were intimately and inseparably bound up with 
these conceptions of the true God — for God is not 
the God of the dead, but of the living. The mys- 
terious Melchizedek, whose dim figure passes 
across the stage of patriarchal history, and 
Abram, the Chaldean, who was called of God to 
go to a strange land and obeyed, are early in- 
stances of the possibilities of human nature 
under the urgency of a divine enlightenment; 
while the long line of priests and prophets and 
the whole body of Israelitish history give no un- 
certain proof of the ethical and spiritual elevation 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 95 

attained through such knowledge of God and 
communion with him. 

Fully conceding all this, our Lord gathers into 
his own person all the ethical value and spiritual 
potency of the prior manifestations and enhances 
them beyond measure by disclosures of the inte- 
rior relations of the Godhead and the transfer of 
those relations, with all their energies of right- 
eousness, love, and fellowship, to the sphere of 
human life. He became the embodiment and ex- 
pression not only of the ancient conception of God, 
but of the interior activities and affections, all the 
personal characters of the Godhead brought into 
fellowship with our nature and expended in its in- 
terest. For " in him dwelleth all the fullness of 
the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in 
him." 

According to these declarations the measure of 
any man's knowledge of God is determined by 
his relation to the Son. Greater than any that had 
been born of woman was John the Baptist, because 
his eyes had looked upon, and he had, as taught 
of God, recognized Jesus as the Son of God. 
The utterance was more distinct than Abraham's 
call; the vision more resplendent than the glory 
shown to Moses. The outlines of that diviner form 
that had never gladdened the eyes of prophets and 



96 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

kings had passed before him, and upon his ear had 
fallen the voice from the divided heavens that pro- 
claimed the presence among men of God's beloved 
Son. No man ever looked with honest eyes and 
pure heart upon that form without some conscious- 
ness of its transforming power, and every recorded 
word of John shows how he who was sounding 
and searching the hearts of all men was himself 
stirred to the lowest depths of his being by con- 
scious and immediate intercourse with the Son of 
the Most High God. But he that is least in the 
kingdom of God is greater than John. For to the 
least of them that love him the word is sure: " He 
that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I 
will love him, and will manifest myself to him, 
. And my Father will love him, and we will 
come unto him, and make our abode with him." It 
is not God only as known to the fathers, but God 
as the Father revealed in the Son and through the 
Spirit, and so brought into vital, personal, loving, 
righteous relation to the heart, conscience, and 
life of men who love him. 

Thus it came to pass that Philip and men like 
him who had known God had the hunger of their 
hearts stirred when Jesus brought him before them 
in their new and higher form, and could not be 
content without the vision of the Father. " Show 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 97 

us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Hence, too, it 
is that wherever Christ is preached neither the 
Gentile conception, nor the Hebraic revelation sat- 
isfies the heart of men. The old petition is re- 
peated: " Show us the Father." The Son is come 
into the midst of us, identified himself with us, 
touched our inmost being, quickened, intensified 
it. Near as he is to us, let us know that Father, 
from whom come forth this diviner humanity, these 
deeper, tenderer affections, this beauty of holiness 
— let us know whom he calls Father; show him 
to us, that we may share in the power and 
blessedness of such communion. The cry only 
shows that now and then our eyes are holden that 
we should not know him. To see the Son is to see 
the Father, whether he come in the lowliness of 
human flesh, in the garments of poverty, with the 
shame and sorrow of the cross, or in glow and 
splendor of his triumph and the transcendent glory 
of his regal life as John in Patmos saw him. 
"And every one that seeth the Son and believeth 
on him, may have everlasting life." 

2. With the revelation of God, Jesus Christ 
brought the revelation of man. 

(1) By the communion with God essential to 
the knowledge of him the dignity, the worth, and 
the possibilities of human nature are unmistakably 



98 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

affirmed. The conscious possession and use of 
faculties through which he apprehends the Maker 
and Lord of all things, and searches out his works, 
discovering his purpose and coming into sympathy 
with his plans, declares his participation in meas- 
ure in the divine nature, and puts him above the 
level of mere plastic, unresponsive material. In so 
far as he can understand and appreciate his will 
and methods he has personal interest in the Crea- 
tor and Ruler of all; and in the sphere of his own 
energies, where he appropriates, directs, it may be 
modifies, processes that have their origin and their 
end in the mind of God, he becomes an active 
participant in divine plans and movements — a 
worker " together with God." The extent of his 
personal influence and the effect that he may pro- 
duce upon final issues depend upon the fullness 
of his understanding of God, and the completeness 
of his conformity to the purpose and methods of 
God. The Son of Man gave the supreme instance 
of the possibilities of our nature, in his incarnate 
career, and gave promise to them that believe on 
him of enhanced power and imperial life as the 
result of his own release from the restrictions of 
the flesh and return to the seat of the Godhead. 
" The works that I do shall he do also; and great- 
er works than these shall he do ; because I go unto 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 99 

ray Father." " He that overcometh" shall "sit 
with me in my throne." Such a revelation bears 
with it the assurance, quickens the consciousness 
of immortality. The idea of death — of final ex- 
tinction — is impossible to the man who knows God 
and is conscious of fellowship and cooperation and 
coagency with him. The inner truth of our Lord's 
words, " God is not the God of the dead, but of 
the living," becomes essential in his experience. 
To this answers the declaration of the Father's 
will (C that every one which seeth the Son, and be- 
lieveth on him" — the full process of revelation — 
" may have eternal life; and I will raise him up at 
the last day" — the consciousness of indestructible 
life guaranteed by the resurrection at the last day. 

( 2 ) By this revelation the ethical relations — i. e. , 
all the living relations — of men are determined. 

Jesus Christ by revealing the Father has not 
changed the quality of moral rectitude nor put it 
upon other grounds than were before set forth. 
He did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. He did 
give defmiteness to the meaning of righteousness 
and far wider scope to its application as a princi- 
ple and power in men. For with utmost explicit- 
ness and directness he proclaims the righteousness 
of God as alone true, and the only standard by 
which the relations of men are to be tried. Not 



IOO THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

undervaluing the legal enactment, nor discard- 
ing the ceremonial requirement in their rightful 
use, he refuses to admit them as final limitations of 
obligation, and will not refer to them as the final 
exponents of rectitude. He first enters the regions 
of human nature where God and man are brought 
together, and in the light of the divine relationship 
sets forth the qualities upon which real righteous- 
ness must be founded. It is not simply the rela- 
tion of man to man that is to be established, but 
first, and as indispensable to the other, the relation 
of man to God. It is not any kingdom of this 
world that is imaged forth in his word and life; it 
is the kingdom of God. 

Further, this righteous relation between God 
and man is determined not by the proclivities, 
needs, and possibilities of the inferior party, but 
by the attributes and possible revealments of the 
Most High. From his way of speaking we might 
suppose that he sees righteousness in its last analy- 
sis to belong to the interior life of the Godhead 
and to grow out of the distinctions therein. The 
Son calls upon him as the "righteous Father," 
proclaiming righteousness as the dominant factor 
in the Father's dealing with himself; and in his 
transactions with the Father as the Advocate for 
men the Son is Jesus Christ the righteous. Bring- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. IOI 

ing it thus out of the depths of the Godhead, and 
determining upon it all the relations between God 
and man, and, at the same time, in his own person 
declaring the extent and intimacy of those rela- 
tions, he has given an ethical, a divine quality to 
life unknown before. In the liturgy and service 
and casuistry of life the scribe and the Pharisee, 
rabbi and priest are swept aside, and conscience 
and heart are laid i( naked and open before the 
eyes of him with whom we have to do." In the 
precincts of the household the law of coarse con- 
cessions to the hardness of imbruted nature and 
of license to the untamed passions of unclean 
souls is abolished, and return to the simplicity, pu- 
rity, and sweetness of the divine beginnings de- 
manded. " In the beginning it was not so " is his 
answer to Pharisaic appeal to Moses's law. Every 
grade and station of life, and all its transactions, 
are brought into the same divine light and subjected 
to the same scrutiny. The law of God's righteous- 
ness is universal and inexorable. " Every plant 
which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall 
be rooted up." " Be ye perfect, even as your 
Father in heaven is perfect." 

3. The work of the Son of God is further 
characterized as redemptive. In every way he 
keeps this purpose before the minds of men. The 



102 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

fact of the sin of the world is set over against the 
righteousness of God, as declared by him and il- 
lustrated in his own person. The power of sin is 
exemplified in the reception and treatment of him- 
self, even when he is most lavish in the expendi- 
ture of his resources for the good of men. The 
evil and danger of sin are proclaimed in terms 
whose solemn and awful import even to-day makes 
the hearts of men fail them for fear, and find their 
last meaning only in fathomless abysses of the 
outer darkness, into which he, with all his tender- 
ness, compassion, and longing for men, sends no 
faintest ray of hope. It was this above all else 
that brought about the incarnation. Whether in 
the process of revelation he would have assumed 
our nature had there been no sin; whether, apart 
from the existence and effect of sin, such form of 
manifestation of God would have been needed, it 
is vain to inquire. We can only conjecture and 
speculate in this region of thought. If any ad- 
vantage is ever to be gained from answer to the in- 
quiry, we may safely relegate it to the category of 
the things to be revealed in higher and clearer 
light. What we know not now we shall know 
hereafter. It is enough for us now that he identi- 
fies revelation and redemption, proclaims it to be the 
end of his coming to take away sin, and explains 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. IO3 

his life at the last by its relation to repentance and 
remission of sins. 

(1) First of all he completes the revelation of 
sin. Here, as in every other line, he brings to 
perfection that which had in divers degrees and 
divers manners been done before. By the law was 
the knowledge of sin. But the law made nothing 
perfect. He came to fulfill — to fill out, to com- 
plete the work of the law. Limited in its range by 
the conditions under which it was given and the 
sphere in which it was operative, the law offered 
only the shadow of good things to come, and not 
the very image of the things. Its meaning and 
effect could not pass beyond the worship embod- 
ied in the ceremonial institute which gave it ex- 
pression. It is an old saying, and true, that man 
never rises higher than his worship. Here were 
ordinances of service and a cosmic sanctuary 
and all the material symbols pertaining thereto, 
the copies of things in the heavens. There was 
an inner shrine to which only the high priest 
dared approach, suggestive of more and better 
than was open to the mind and conscience of the 
people. However far-reaching the suggestion 
might be, the actual effect upon the understanding 
and the ethical faculty was limited by the outward 
and earthly form of the service and by the media- 



104 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

tion of it through men who were given to death. 
The measurement of sin by quantity and quality 
of sacrifice was fatal to its deeper spiritual appre- 
ciation, a legal defect remedied only in part by 
the fact that many transgressions more imme- 
diately affecting the relations of men to God were 
left, wholly without sacrificial remedy, and by 
the further fact that prophecy with its diviner 
insight and further reach of authority was super- 
imposed upon the law. It was prophecy that 
searched the conscience of David and elicited the 
confession: "I have sinned against the Lord." 
It was prophecy alone that dared to say: " The 
Lord also hath put away thy sin." No priest in 
Israel would have provided sacrifice or proffered 
forgiveness for such offense. 

The very energy with which the law wrought 
its way into all the details of life, and sought by 
specific enactment to bring within its scope every 
possible condition and line of endeavor, was con- 
fession of its weakness ; and at the same time, as 
with the growth of the centuries, life became more 
complex and the application of law more difficult, 
it inevitably degenerated into Rabbinism, and be- 
came a yoke which, in apostolic language, " nei- 
ther our fathers nor we were able to bear." Un- 
der the influence of this tendency sin became a 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. IO5 

hopeless perplexity and life an intolerable burden. 
There were, of course, as already intimated, high- 
er views of man's relation to God, in the light of 
which the conception of sin was deepened and in- 
tensified. The Psalms and the prophets give am- 
ple witness to this. Indeed, so intense and thor- 
ough was the conviction of sin expressed in them 
that the Church of to-day can find no truer or 
better terms in which to offer her confession and 
make her supplication. But even this fuller utter- 
ance must be interpreted by the conditions of the 
times, and measured as to its import by their con- 
ceptions of the God made known to them. Its 
deepest meaning is declared to us only when we 
bring it into the intense light of the final revelation 
of God made in his Son. For to the prophets 
who searched what the Spirit of Christ in them 
did signify it was revealed that " not unto them- 
selves, but unto us they did minister." 

Jesus Christ made full use of the law and the 
prophets, in their proper application, for the con- 
viction of sin. He sends the leper — the type and 
open expression to the Jew of the effect of sin — . 
to the priest to offer for his cleansing as the law 
required, and thus made legal ordinances obliga- 
tory upon them that were under the law. He 
bade the people observe what the scribes and 



I06 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

Pharisees commanded, because they sat in Moses's 
seat. He tested the conscience and life of the anx- 
ious young ruler by the commandments, and time 
and again quoted the words of the prophet Isaiah 
to convince the people of sin and to rebuke them. 
But he gave the law a more profound meaning 
than priest or rabbi ever knew, and ? transcending 
its preceptive form into living force and discard- 
ing the measurements and applications of the 
visible sanctuary, sent it with its divine energy and 
sanction into the most secret recesses of the soul, 
searching the very thoughts and intents of the 
heart. He summed up all prophecy in the preg- 
nant words of Isaiah which he read in the syna- 
gogue at Nazareth, and applied it to himself, 
" This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears," 
and thenceforth charged men with sin because 
they believed not on him, and declared that with- 
out faith in him there was no deliverance from 
sin possible. " If ye believe not that I am he, ye 
shall die in your sins." 

Nor does he content himself with words. The 
divine authority with which he speaks, the blame- 
less holiness of his life, and the might of his work- 
ing compel the recognition in his person of a 
standard of life and character to which all legal 
estimates must yield, and before which the right- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. IO7 

eousness cf the law, exemplified in Simon, who 
had never " eaten anything common or unclean," 
shrinks with the confession of sin, and the gross 
licentiousness of the woman that was a sinner 
melts away into repentant tears. Under the light 
of the divine relations set forth in him, the old 
conceptions of sin appear entirely inadequate and 
are merged and lost in the enormity of the one 
supreme offense of rejecting him. " If I had not 
come and spoken unto them, ... if I had not 
done among them the works which none other 
man did, they had not had sin: but now have 
they both seen and hated both me and my Fa- 
ther." Beyond this the estimate of sin could not 
go. Divine authority resisted, divine righteous- 
ness rejected, divine love insulted — the very foun- 
dations of the order of the worlds and of human 
hope subverted in the refusal to believe and re- 
ceive him whom the Father hath sent into the 
world. So rooted has this estimate become in 
the conscience of the world, that until to-day, in 
spite of equivocations and sentimental attempts 
to excuse or mitigate it, the one supreme, typical 
sin in the world's history is the treachery of Judas 
— the last possibility of wrong done to the Son of 
God. The heart echoes the words of the Christ, 
44 It were better for him that he had never been 



I08 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

born," and shudders at the awful significance of 
the apostle's saying that "he went to his own 
place." 

(2) But " God sent not his Son into the world 
to condemn the world, but that the world through 
him might be saved." It was not only that he 
might make sin fully known and show its exceed- 
ing sinfulness, but that he might provide for and 
offer remission of sins and deliverance from its 
power. The Son of Man came to seek and to 
save that which was lost. It is here that the won- 
der and the power of his life appear. Everything 
else falls into the commonplace when compared 
with the marvelous achievement of taking away 
the sin of the world — taking it away from the re- 
lations between God and men, and renewing and 
transforming the moral and spiritual nature of 
men. 

It may be well here to utter a caution against 
the indifference to and depreciation of this side of 
our Lord's work, characteristic of some phases of 
thought, and common to men whose sense of sin 
is blunted and whose conceptions of sin are low 
and narrow. To them it seems an easy thing for 
God to forgive sin — a prompting of his loving, 
kindly, compassionate nature, to which he can 
freely yield himself, as he is without responsibili- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. IO9 

ty to any. We may not go far into the nature of 
God, nor inquire too curiously into the moral 
qualities and relations essential to him, and which 
control all his affections toward and his transac- 
tions with his intelligent creatures. We know 
only so much as he has revealed and as finds 
response in our self-consciousness and ethical 
sense. So much is certain: that this life of the 
Son of God, thrown with all its resplendent char- 
acters and possibilities of power and endurance 
into the midst of men — the most startling and 
amazing phenomenon upon which the world has 
ever looked — was absolutely devoted to this one 
thing; and the only reason of his death which he 
gave was that it was essential to the remission of 
sins. "This is my blood of the new testament, 
which is shed for many for the remission of sins." 
In attempting to express more fully his own 
view of this side of his work we are guarded 
against a too bold and aggressive statement of 
any definite theory by the reserve of our Lord's 
speech and the entire absence of anything like a 
formal explanation of the principles involved in 
redemption. Yet we are constrained by the de- 
mands of faith and emboldened by apostolic ex- 
ample to ascertain and assert the great facts — not 
only historic, within time, but eternal — which fur- 



110 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

nish the ground of atonement, and give cogency 
to its appeal to the higher spiritual nature in man. 
These facts were expressed in his person and life, 
rather than formulated and logically connected 
with the great result to be achieved. A pregnant 
sentence now and then offers us a glimpse into 
his own consciousness, and helps us to interpret 
from within the purpose and work of a life that 
from without could find no sufficient explanation. 
By reference to such utterances we may be able 
to signalize the leading essential facts, and per- 
haps shall find in them the best answer to the cav- 
ils that have been flung at the supreme truth of 
the gospel, the only sufficient provision for human 
want, and the ground and source of hope for the 
world. 

i. Jesus Christ assumes that of right and by 
personal authority he only, in all the universe, can 
undertake and accomplish the redemption of men 
and the rectification of the disorder in the universe 
occasioned by sin. It is a business into which 
none other can intrude, and for which no other is 
competent. 

2. This right and power he refers to his own 
eternal relations with God and his consequent, 
original, and indefeasible relations with men and 
with the entire creation. The oft-repeated affir- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. Ill 

mations in manifold form of the glory that he had 
with the Father before the world was are not in- 
tended simply to declare the majesty of his person 
and enhance the greatness of his sacrifice and 
add luster to the crown of his achievement, but 
rather to show in these original relations the 
ground and reason of his undertaking, to indicate 
the fullness of his power and the sufficiency of his 
authority to intervene in human affairs. St. Paul 
states the case with more than philosophical pre- 
cision and in logical order when he writes to the 
Colossians of " the Son of his love; in whom we 
have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins: 
who is the image of the invisible God, the first- 
born of all creation; for in him were all things 
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things 
visible and things invisible, whether thrones or 
dominions or principalities or powers; all things 
have been created through him, and unto him; and 
he is before all things, and in him all things consist. 
And he is the head of the body, the church; who 
is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; 
that in all things he might have the preemi- 
nence." With fuller statement on the side of the 
process of incarnation the Gospel of John affirms 
the same relations and their significance. The 
intimation of his prerogative is given by our Lord 



112 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

in the parable of the husbandman: " They will 
reverence my Son." "This is the heir; come, 
let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours." 
No less distinct is the teaching of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews: "God hath spoken to us by his 
Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through 
whom also he made the worlds; who being the 
effulgence of his glory and the very image of his 
substance, and upholding all things by the word of 
his power, when he had made purification of sins, 
sat down on the right hand of the majesty on 
high." It matters little whether the phrase "by 
himself" be retained, or, as in the Revised Ver- 
sion, omitted. The sense is unchanged. The 
Son, Heir of all things and Creator of the worlds, 
alone has authority to come in and take control 
of human affairs. The effulgence of the glory 
of God alone can displace the darkness of sin. 
The power of him who upholds all things by his 
word is alone sufficient to " take away the sin of 
the world." The interference of another in this 
sphere of his exclusive relations and absolute right 
and power would be an intrusion, an impertinence, 
an invasion of divine prerogatives. When the 
chief of the apostles in his ignorant amazement 
presumed to touch, however lightly, with mere 
suggestion of human wisdom these "things that 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. II3 

be of God," the stern repulse, " Get thee behind 
me, Satan," warned him off from this region into 
which only the daring effrontery of the prince of 
darkness would venture, to his own shame and 
discomforture. 

It is needful to keep this feature "of revelation 
clearly before us. For the questions that arise 
upon the discussion of the atonement are nearly 
all framed upon the view of human relations and 
the analogies that they seem to furnish to the great 
transaction. There are no analogies possible in 
the visible and natural relations of men to this 
event. It is as absolutely unique and without 
precedent and parallel as the person of the Son of 
God. Incidents in human life and ceremonial or- 
dainments may furnish types and shadows of par- 
tial phases of the work of redemption, and give 
hint to men of deeper meanings and broader pur- 
pose than they could express; but it was a mys- 
tery hidden from the ages and made known only 
when God sent "his own Son in the likeness of 
sinful flesh." It had its beginning in the interior 
life of the Godhead in the relations between the 
Father, who is the Fountain and Source of all be- 
ing, and the Son, through whom all things were 
made and in whom all things consist, and who an- 
swers to the Father as the only Mediator for all 



114 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

things. We grope our way with dim and uncer- 
tain vision when we enter these regions of divine 
life. We cannot sound these abysses. But we 
surely do not abate the reverence due to him who 
dwells in light that no man can approach unto, 
when we fling some rays from the face of his Son 
upon the inscrutable 4 mystery, and set forth the 
redemption by Jesus Christ as having its roots 
within the Godhead, in the eternal relations be- 
tween the Father and the Son. 

Has not our gospel suffered by being drawn too 
far down into the region of mere human thought 
and visible relations? It is a divine thing to lift 
human associations and sympathies to the heaven- 
ly places and shape them, after their true and 
original intent, into reflections of divine relations. 
We were made at the first after the likeness and 
image of God. But to take our notions of divine 
rule from the conventions and institutions of this 
world, to frame the laws of the kingdom of heav- 
en in agreement with our sociological science, to 
bring the righteousness of God into harmony with 
results drawn from data of ethics gathered from 
the manifold capricious forms and experiences of 
the visible sensuous life and to test the principles 
of divine life and administration by the abstrac- 
tions of human intellect is surely to reverse the 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 115 

true order and incur the reproach, " Thou 
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as 
thyself." It should be ours to maintain the lofty 
tone of the divine testimonies, and keep reverent- 
ly in mind that our Christ " was in the beginning 
with God," " the Lamb slain from the foundation 
of the world," and that we were " chosen in him 
before the foundation of the world," and cannot 
take our understanding of the things of God from 
the wisdom of this world, or of the princes of this 
world, in whatever department they may have 
rule. 

The relations of the Son to men also date back 
to eternal beginnings. He is the " firstborn of all 
creation," and "in him all things consist." On 
the one side, as the image of the invisible God re- 
ceiving into himself all the fullness of divine life, 
he manifests it in the making and holding together 
in himself of all things, and expresses it in his per- 
sonal relations to intelligent creatures; on the 
other, as the only sufficient and rightful represent- 
ative of the worlds, he answers for them to the 
Father. It is in virtue of all this that he distin- 
guishes between himself and all other men. 
Greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah, setting 
his " I say unto you " above the word of prophet 
and lawgiver, and denouncing a heavier condem- 



Il6 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

nation than had fallen upon Tyre and Sidon, 
Sodom and Gomorrah, against the cities that had 
refused to give heed to his offer. Profoundly in 
sympathy with men and a friend of publicans and 
sinners, he refused to be classed with them. He 
was made in all things like unto his brethren, yet 
was separated from sinners and made higher than 
the heavens. He admits none to share in his 
functions and in exercise of his authority, uses 
men only as messengers and witnesses for himself. 
He extends the scope of his authority and person- 
al relationship through all time and to the utter- 
most parts of the earth. He is not simply the 
ideal of human character and life and the most 
potent factor in human history — the sublimated 
and sanctified hero and martyr of humanity; he 
is ' ; the Word become flesh " — the Word in his 
original rights and relations and with his authority 
unimpaired sent and coming into the body of our 
humanity, and exercising his prerogatives through 
the organs of incarnate life and by the ways of 
human fellowship. Historically, within the limits 
of time, he asserts and exercises the powers and 
rights of his eternal life. 

3. The form and manner of this entrance into 
human history constitute another feature in his re- 
demptive work. In his speech it is characterized 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 11'/ 

as transfer from the sphere of the Godhead to 
the limited region of the temporal life. "I pro- 
ceeded forth and came from God." " The Fa- 
ther sent me." It is a form of speech which finds 
its best interpretation in the process described by 
St. Paul: " Being in the form of God, he thought 
it not a thing to be grasped after to be equal with 
God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a 
servant, being made in the likeness of men." In 
the freer rendering of a Bampton lecturer, " He 
was essentially in the form of God, so that it was 
no invasion of the divine to claim equality with 
God; and yet he laid this aside and put on che 
form of our human servitude." It is the Word 
become flesh, the conjunction of his entire and 
absolute authority over all things with servitude 
and sacrifice, the restriction of his power to the 
limits prescribed by human weakness and its use 
through the organic forms and according to the 
divine order of human life. 

It is in this first movement of descent that the 
principle and power of redemption appear, to be 
carried forward in the development of his incar- 
nate life until they culminate in the passion and 
the cross. The question so often put, " Is it 
righteous that the innocent be made to suffer for 
the guilty?" has no pertinence here. It belongs 



Il3 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

only to the sphere of human life and relations, and 
as far as it has any application to the human life 
of the Son of God it has its answer in the un- 
qualified condemnation pronounced by the gospel 
and the world upon all who were in any degree 
implicated in his death. Caiaphas is not exoner- 
ated because he prophesied unconsciously the 
great fact of atonement by Jesus Christ, any more 
than Pilate who judged him, or Judas who be- 
trayed him. '" Ye with wicked hands have cruci- 
fied and slain him." God and man concur in ex- 
ecuting vengeance against those who betrayed and 
shed innocent blood. Judas and Jerusalem are 
witnesses. But a broader relation and a higher 
righteousness than the terms of individual human 
life can cover are involved here. He was de- 
livered by the determinate counsel and foreknowl- 
edge of God. In his own language, he was " sent 
of God, of the Father. ' ' Himself privy to the coun- 
sel and participant in the transaction, he came out 
from the Godhead to reassert his own and his 
Father's right and righteousness, and recover the 
world from the power and effect of sin. It does 
not concern us how sin had its beginning, or why 
he suffered it even in its inception. It is enough 
to be assured that this invasion of divine right and 
enemy of all righteousness could not be allowed to 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. IIQ 

maintain its hold forever upon the world which the 
Son of God claimed as his own. He came to as- 
sert his right; he came as the Word made flesh. 
His first, supreme work was "in the likeness 
of sinful flesh, and on account of sin, to con- 
demn sin in the flesh.' ' He was made under law, in 
form of a servant, and by absolute devotion to his 
Father's will declared and illustrated the divine 
righteousness which was fatal to sin. As a mere 
unit in the teeming multitudes of the race, an indi- 
vidual with exceptional and extraordinary gifts and 
qualities of character he might have had influence 
proportioned to his human worth and power. It 
is not possible to say how far this might have 
reached. Mere human character at its best is 
great beyond expression, and touches life over 
vast areas and along immeasurable tracts of time. 
Of the first recorded instance it is still, after all 
these ages of growth, change, revolution, written 
and written truly: " He being dead yet speaketh." 
But more than mere human influence is in contem- 
plation here. The divine righteousness essential to 
the life of the Godhead and to the relations and 
transactions between God and the world is vindi- 
cated and exhibited. More than the worth and 
power of an individual life is required. 

A moment may well be given here to the consid- 



120 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

eration of an element that has been abstractly and 
theologically discussed, but as a vital fact and 
essential to redemption has hardly been sufficient- 
ly taken into account. Our human nature is not 
made up of a multitude of separate, disconnected 
units. It is a vast organic whole, each part in vi- 
tal connection with every other. We cannot set 
aside individual character and responsibility. 
There is in each of us the isolation of an awful 
solitude into which no other can intrude. But it 
is an inevitable condition that no man liveth or 
dieth to himself. His character is formed in asso- 
ciation with others, and his destiny determined 
largely by the terms of his related life. In the 
narrow range of our common life, we hardly need 
to be reminded of it. In the fields of thought and 
action, we own our indebtedness for much the 
largest part of what we are and hope to become to 
the material and opportunities furnished by ever- 
enlarging circles of life. Where sympathy and af- 
fection are engaged the sense of oneness with oth- 
er life becomes more intense, and the impressions 
in consciousness and character more deep and 
abiding-. Farther reaching than this is the law that 
binds us through ever multiplying and divergent 
lines to the generations of the past, so that by 
heredity and transmitted agencies and institutions, 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 121 

by history and tradition, we have been made what 
we are. We are the product of hundreds of gen- 
erations, and shall in turn contribute to the build- 
ing up of the coming world and to the shaping of 
its destiny. Of those gone before us it is said: 
" They without us shall not be made perfect." 
This, which is true in science and in the com- 
mon life of this world, is more profoundly true of 
the higher moral and spiritual realm to which men 
belong. Here the " unity of nature" is affirmed 
with a completeness unknown amidst the divisi\ r e 
tendencies of the fleshly life. A divine purpose 
and order including all things, community of life 
proceeding from the same divine source, interde- 
pendence, affection, sympathy, are indicated in 
the body with its one head and many members, 
"every one members one of another." Its final 
realization will be after the pattern of the divine 
unity — as " Thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, 
that they also may be one in us." 

Into this body of our humanity, as its rightful 
Head and in closer and more vital connection with 
it as a whole, and with every member of it, than 
any other could be, Jesus Christ came. 

It is with this body as a whole that God first 
deals. Whatever may be the claims of the indi- 
vidual conscience and the needs of the individual 



122 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

man- — and these are never forgotten — -the work of 
Christ is for the world, and his relations as the 
"word made flesh'* are with the world. The 
world is conceived of as wrought upon by man, 
who is the crown and lord of it all, involving it in 
his disorder and degradation. " God so loved the 
world, " "sent his Son into the world," "I am 
the light of the world," and many such like say- 
ings, as well as the commission and provision for 
the final process of gathering in the world, point to 
the true purpose of God. Creation culminates in 
humanity, and humanity culminates in Jesus. 
Christ, as come in the flesh, is the ideal which God 
had in view in the process of creation. So then 
in the beginning the race as a whole was had in 
contemplation in the creation by Jesus Christ, and 
at the last the race is to be brought into oneness, 
and all things gathered together in one— in Jesus 
Christ. 

These suggestions indicate the nature of the 
work of Jesus Christ in redemption : I . He as Head, 
Creator, in whom all things consist, is in vital rela- 
tion to the world of mankind, and every individual 
of the race is in intimate connection with him. 2. 
His entrance into our flesh puts him in the same 
relation to God as the world into which he comes: 
made of a woman, made under the law, bound up 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 1 23 

with the body of mankind, subject to its conditions. 

3. As required by these conditions, he fulfills all 
righteousness, does the work of a servant, doing 
not his own will, but the will of Him that sent him. 

4. He endures the penalty fallen upon the race. 
" Sin entered into the world, and death by sin ; and 
so death passed upon all men, for that all have 
sinned." In his personal right he was exempt; 
in his identification of himself with humanity he 
claimed no exemption. He held himself answer- 
able to the Father for the world which owed its be- 
ing to him. He was made sin for us who knew no 
sin. 5. Finally by his resurrection he vindicated 
the power of personal righteousness and sent forth 
into the world the new life for the recovery of men. 
From beginning to end of the incarnate career, un- 
der the burden of servitude, in presence of human 
scorn, hate and treachery, through all the torture 
of the garden and the cross he asserts his divine 
authority, puts himself at the head of mankind, 
and declares his very presence among men, his 
work and his sufferings, to be voluntary and for the 
world's salvation, and vindicates his claims by the 
resurrection. Witness his word, " I lay down my 
life of myself; no man taketh it from me. I lay 
it down of myself and I take it again;" his re- 
buke of his disciples, " I could presently call upon 



124 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

my Father, and he would send me twelve legions 
of angels;" his attitude of independence before 
Pilate, " Thou couldst have no power over me at 
all except it were given thee from above." 

Thus in his person we have the righteousness of 
God manifested, remission of sins declared, and as 
mediating and reconciling these otherwise irrecon- 
cilable factors, the propitiation. By these he fin- 
ished the work given him to do. 

But little needs to be said of his works. They 
are but illustrations in detail of his work as a whole. 
The leading feature in them is that indicated by 
the most frequent word used for them, " signs." 
They were intended to be only intimations and 
suggestions of the truth and power that lay behind 
them, and, like his parables, to induce men to in- 
quire for and into the thing signified. In this view 
they were tests of character. In some, as Peter 
at the draught of fishes, they quickened the inner 
sense and brought out the confession of sin. Some 
regarded them only as an extraordinary provision 
for the natural wants of men, and sought him not 
because they saw the signs, but because they " did 
eat of the loaves, and were filled." No doubt they 
thought that with a leader who could care for his 
fellows after this sort, Jewish hopes might soon be 
realized and the yoke of hated Rome be broken 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 1 25 

off. Others still, in their malignity and envy, 
could see in them only the working of demoniac 
powers, and charged his miracles to the account 
of Beelzebub, the prince of devils. In all cases 
the reception and use of them fairly determined 
the mind of the man toward Christ, and his fit- 
ness for the kingdom of God. Ten lepers were 
cleansed, and none returned to give thanks to God 
but the Samaritan. " Where were the nine? " 

Looking at them from another point of view, 
they are assertions of his authority over all things. 
In this sense, too, they have value as signs. No 
such power over winds and seas, earth and air, 
and all things therein, could be lodged in any 
but the rightful Lord of men. " Whether is 
easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to 
say, Arise, and walk?" But apart from this sig- 
nificance they are in entire keeping with the atti- 
tude which he took invariably toward all men and 
all things. He was here as the heir, sent by the 
Father to assert his rights and authority, and 
whenever need arose or occasion offered he did 
so. He did not heal all the sick, nor raise all the 
dead, nor cleanse all the lepers. When he as- 
cended, the sum of the world's suffering and sor- 
row was scarcely perceptibly less than when he 
came among men. But the keynote to the new 



126 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

song had been given. Whenever leper, lame, 
blind, sick, or dead was brought before him in 
sincere recognition of his authority, he declared 
his power. Devils recognized it. He would do 
nothing for himself, but anything, everything for 
them that believed in him. Henceforth the world 
may know that all power in heaven and earth, 
even to the remission of sins, is given to him. 

In another view they were in confirmation of 
his claims, attestations of the divinity of his per- 
son. So the text. They are the normal and in- 
evitable expressions of his character. The won- 
der in relation to them is the reserve which char- 
acterizes them. In the sweep of his power he 
might have gone through Judea and Palestine, 
banishing plague and pestilence, breaking up the 
graves and abolishing cemeteries, bringing com- 
fort and joy to the bereaved homes and hearts of 
the multitudes. But he restricts himself to the 
few who can answer affirmatively: " Believest 
thou that I am able to do this?" In every instance 
he tells what he is by what he does. Whether 
for help and healing — tribute to be paid, and mul- 
titudes to be fed — or for judgment, as on the bar- 
ren fig tree, he makes men know that he is but ex- 
ercising his native right. The wonder is not in 
what he does, but in what he is and that he is here. 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORKS. 1 27 

Finally, his works express the mind and heart 
of God to men. They are the things that the Fa- 
ther is doing. Power, compassion, helpfulness, 
judgment — in all alike, and in each instance he 
simply declares how the Father thinks and feels. 
It is the veritable revelation of God in human ac- 
tion and sympathy. 

He is the same yesterday and to-day and forev- 
er. To find what is the mind of God toward you 
and the world of the present, search for the deal- 
ings of his Son with men. The sins are the same, 
the weakness and the woe, and the graves are 
still close sealed; but the Son of Man, the Son of 
God, brightness of the glory of God, is in power, 
and compassion the same, and only waits until the 
world shall own him, to wipe away all tears and 
open all graves. 



LECTURE IV. 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

(129) 
9 



IV. 

THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

" Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not 
come to me, that ye might have life." John v. 39, 40. 

A A WHETHER read in the imperative or, with 
' ^ the Revised Version, in the indicative, the 
words point the Jews to the futility of their search 
and rebuke their failure to take true direction from 
the Scriptures. They expected to obtain eternal 
life. But the Scriptures told them of Christ. If 
they had believed and been obedient to them, they 
would have known the Christ, and coming to him 
would have had life. It is clear that our Lord in- 
tended to refer his claims to the testimony of the 
Scriptures, those Scriptures which we know as 
the Old Testament. The language is too plain to 
be misunderstood. But it has ample support from 
the appeals to Moses and the prophets, the quota- 
tions from them in his teachings and in the special 
instruction which he gave his disciples in the 
Scriptures concerning himself. " Beginning at 
Moses and all the prophets, he expounded" to the 

two disciples on the way to Emmaus " in all the 

(131) 



132 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

Scriptures the things concerning himself;" and in 
his last hours with them, " Then opened he their 
understanding, that they might understand the 
Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, 
and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise 
from the dead." In pursuance of his method the 
apostles reasoned with Jews and Gentiles out of the 
Scriptures, showing that Jesus was the Christ. 

As our Lord distinctly declined to rest his claims 
upon mere human testimony, even such as John's, 
he evidently intended to set the Scriptures apart 
and assign to them a value attaching to no other 
records as authoritative and divine. He calls them 
the word of God, and affirms their perpetual sig- 
nificance and obligation. 

The scope and limits of this lecture do not admit 
of a discussion of the questions raised by this ap- 
peal. We have only to state the conclusions to 
which we are shut up by the use made of the 
Scriptures by our Lord and his apostles. 

1. The stability and integrity of our gospel are 
bound up with the inspiration and divine authority 
of the Old Testament. We are "built upon the 
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus 
Christ himself being the chief corner stone." 
Apostolic and prophetic teaching unite and are 
held together in Jesus Christ. They do not sim- 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 1 33 

ply constitute separate parts, either of which may 
be removed without danger to the other. They 
are inseparably combined. Blot out from the 
New Testament the features which identify it with 
the Old, and little will be left that is worth con- 
tending for. Take away the material in history, 
thought, worship, and experience drawn from the 
Old Testament, and you destroy the validity of 
our Lord's appeal and the argument of apostolic 
preaching. No concessions to the power and pu- 
rity of the gospel, no admissions of its ethical value 
to the world, will avail to sustain it as an isolated 
and independent institution and agency. By its 
own terms it is committed to such intimate and vi- 
tal relationship to the Old Scriptures that they 
stand or fall together. 

2. The Scriptures were intended for our learn- 
ing, for our admonition, " upon whom the ends of 
the ages are come." They had not only the abid- 
ing quality characteristic of many works of genius, 
but were distinguished from all other literature in 
that they addressed themselves to the ages to come 
rather than to their own generations. Like the in- 
stitutes of the tabernacle, they were but a figure, 
or parable for the time then present, whose mean- 
ing should be fully disclosed only when the way 
into the holiest of all should be made manifest. 



134 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

So says the apostle Peter: " The prophets inquired 
and searched diligently, . . . what, or what 
manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was 
in them did signify. . . . Unto whom it was 
revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us 
they did minister the things, that are now reported 
unto you by them that have preached the gospel 
unto you." 

3. They were the product of a divine influence 
upon the minds of men, and as such carried with 
them the authority of divine command and the cer- 
tainty of divine truth. "All Scripture is given by 
inspiration of God." The testimony is not sub- 
stantially altered if the reading of the Revised 
Version be adopted : "Every scripture inspired 
of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, 
for correction, for instruction which is in righteous- 
ness: that the man of God may be complete, fur- 
nished completely unto every good work." For it 
still affirms inspiration for the class of Scripture re- 
ferred to, and the writer, in common with his Lord 
and the other apostles, makes appeal to no other 
than the Old Testament to instruct in righteousness, 
and furnish for every good work. To this agree the 
words of the apostle Peter, when he adduces in 
proof of the power and coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ the " more sure word of prophecy . . . 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 1 35 

as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the 
day dawn, and the daystar arise in your heart," 
and affirms that no prophecy was ever brought by 
the will of man, " but men spake from God, being 
moved by the Holy Ghost." In the same way 
almost every Epistle, as well as the Gospels, Acts 
of the Apostles, and Apocalypse of John, refers 
to and uses the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. They 
are brought forward, not as selected and preserved 
specimens of the highest and best thought and lit- 
erature of the nation, nor even as an element in its 
religious life with a liturgical value and having the 
sanctity of worship attached to it, but as the au- 
thoritative standard of righteousness for the world, 
the divine revelation of things not seen, and the 
only promise of hope to all men. The claim is 
that these books were written by men chosen of 
God for the purpose and enlightened by the Holy 
Spirit. 

By the terms of our gospel we are more than 
justified in reading the Old Testament Scriptures 
in the light of the later history. It is not an unfair 
or uncritical treatment of them. It is not an at- 
tempt to read into them our own later conceptions 
of what ought to have been, and upon this founda- 
tion to frame a system that shall represent human 
character and destiny and divine righteousness as 



I36 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the world of to-day understands them. That is 
rather the spirit of those who deny the validity and 
authority of the record because it is not according 
to the mind of our time, or would read out of it 
everything that is not capable of test by the critical 
standards of this world's wisdom. 

We take as our guides, first, the prophets them- 
selves, who accepted the teaching that in coming 
events they should find the interpretation of the 
things then spoken and events then occurring; 
second, of our Lord and his apostles, who re 
f erred their own work and teaching to divine au- 
thority as attested by the prophetic Scriptures, and 
constantly explained the past by the occurrences 
of their time ; and finally, even that entire class of 
historical inquirers who seek — and not in vain — the 
sources and motives of their own age in the ante- 
cedent currents of life, and find clearer under- 
standing of the former times in the issues of the 
present. 

We violate no principle of historical criticism 
when we thus insist upon the unity of revelation 
and take our understanding of its earlier portions 
from the final result in which they have combined 
and culminated. We do, in our treatment of the 
preparatory history and the older records, hold 
ourselves under the restraint of the divine caution: 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 137 

" My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are 
your ways my ways, saith the Lord." It should 
therefore be our endeavor to find the divine meth- 
ods of revelation, especially as taught by Christ, 
and trace them in the Scriptures of the Old Testa- 
ment. The character and meaning of the work 
of the Son of God give us the true line of direction 
in our inquiry into the purport and final effect of 
those Scriptures. According to these we look for 
revelation in such degrees and forms as would pre- 
pare the way for the final manifestation of God in 
his Son, for intimations of redemptive purpose and 
its methods that would clearly enough point to the 
incarnation and the sacrifice of the Son of God as 
their fulfillment, and for divine direction of and in- 
terposition in human affairs to the extent neces- 
sary to make ready a people prepared for the 
Lord. 

In the life of Jesus Christ we are dealing with 
the most momentous event in the history of our 
world — an event entirely unique, and holding with- 
in itself elements and forces intended to affect the 
whole course of human history and to determine 
the destinies of all men, and lying quite apart from 
the reach of mere human investigation. To 
thrust such an event rudely and without prepara- 
tion into the current of human affairs would have 



138 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

been to discredit the providential order of move- 
ment in the world, to disturb and turn off into ir- 
regular and erratic courses the normal processes 
of thought, and to fling the minds and lives of 
men into the insanities of groundless faith and fa- 
natical endeavor. It is hardly conceivable that 
the incarnation of the Son of God, and his life, 
death, and resurrection, permeated by and satu- 
rated with the supernatural quality, should have 
made their immediate demand upon the faith and 
obedience of men without such full preparation. 
Unless there were an abrupt and violent departure 
from all his recognized methods of working, 
God must have prepared the way for the coming 
of his Son by a dispensation heavily charged with 
supernatural elements; or, to put the same state- 
ment in another form, the foregoing course of hu- 
man events must have been so evidently directed 
of God and have furnished such supernatural 
manifestations of his presence as to give ground 
and reason for faith in the full and final revelation 
in his Son. 

It can hardly be doubted that God would pro- 
vide in some measure such witness to himself 
among the Gentiles, and amidst their perversions 
of truth, abuses of nature, and idolatries of wor- 
ship leave some possibilities of the discovery of 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 1 39 

better things. Indeed, the records and monu- 
ments of history give ample intimation that the 
thought of the one God, however dim and uncer- 
tain it had come to be, had not utterly died out 
from the minds of men, that, as St. Paul charged, 
they knew God, though they glorified him not as 
God; and the Old Testament Scriptures show that 
all the great heathen nations were at some moment 
in their life brought into relation, for good or evil, 
with the chosen people, and had opportunity to 
learn, if they would, the divine meaning of events 
clearly outside the range of natural movement — 
such as the plagues of Egypt, and the destruction 
of Sennacherib's army, the mission of Elisha to 
Hazael, and of Jonah to Nineveh — which pro- 
foundly affected themselves, and grew out of their 
intercourse with Israel. 

If we could read the history of the old world in 
its completeness, we should surely find that, as old 
Theophilus Gale put it, God had provided in his 
great temple a " Court of the Gentiles," where 
they might learn his will and render him worship. 

But while there are in cur New Testament oc- 
casional references to the interest and intervention 
of God in the affairs of the world at large, the 
stress of the argument in b@half of the Christ is 
laid upon the records of the Old Testament as the 



I4O THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

revelation of the purpose of God, and the prepar- 
ation for the coming of his Son. " They are 
they," said Christ, " which testify of me." 

Assuming the authority of the record, it is our 
first business to look into the nature and contents 
of the testimony adduced. The contents are va- 
ried. History, law, prophecy, devotion, proverb — 
all have their place in the series. One general 
observation applies to them all, which is that they 
partake of the prophetic quality. We do not haz- 
ard much in saying that from the point of view of 
our Scriptures there is a prophetic element in all 
human history. For no event stands alone, unre- 
lated, and disconnected. Each is the precursor 
of something to follow, and contains within itself 
the germ of future unfoldings. Every generation 
sows the seed of harvests to be reaped in after 
ages. This is even more profoundly true when 
moral principles are involved, and moral and spir- 
itual forces are at work. It is in this view that 
the historic life of the nations about Israel is 
brought into the account of the divine administra- 
tion, and the lesson of God's dealings with them 
bound up with the record of his oversight and 
management of the affairs of his own people. In 
measure, too, it may be affirmed that through all 
the darkness, tumult, struggle, and suffering of 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. I4I 

the ages there survives and abides the hope of 
better things to come. It has not always been so 
in human consciousness. There have been mo- 
ments in the life of the world when men seemed 
given over to despair, their " hearts failing them 
for fear, and for looking after those things which 
are coming on the earth." But even then there 
have not been wanting true interpreters of the 
signs of the times, men who knew r something of 
God, and dared in the extremes of human depres- 
sion to " look up and lift up their heads " in sure 
hope of speedy redemption. It is a poor reading 
that fails to find God in history; and wherever 
God is there is hope for men. 

What is true on a broad scale for all the nations 
is intensified and condensed into more full and ex- 
act expression in the life of the people whom Je- 
hovah set apart for himself. From the beginning 
immediately and continuously under divine con- 
trol, it was shaped and prepared for larger and 
better issues. The introductory patriarchal pe- 
riod had in its life the promise and prophecy of 
"the good things to come," and in its conscious 
communication with God and revelations of his 
power and care whenever needed held a pledge 
and guarantee of the fulfillment. 

It would exceed proper limits to give in detail 



I42 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the proof and illustration of this statement. It 
will suffice to refer to two specific revelations 
which, more than any other, furnished the ground 
of human hope and were expanded and fulfilled in 
the history and institutions of succeeding ages, un- 
til they culminated in the coming of the Son of 
God. 

The one is the promise given in connection with 
the curse pronounced upon the serpent; the other, 
the covenant made with Abraham. 

The first promise comes immediately upon the 
catastrophe of the fall. It does not stand alone, 
nor is it addressed immediately to Adam and Eve. 
The burden of the divine communication is the 
curse that was to abide upon the tempter, the 
curse of a perpetual degradation below the level 
of the lowest brute life, and an undying enmity 
between himself and the race whom he sought to 
dominate — an enmity which should eventuate in 
the complete and final overthrow of his power, in 
the penalty of sorrow and subjection denounced 
against the woman, and of labor, suffering, and 
death upon the man. It was the most impressive 
and even exhaustive assertion of the right of God 
in his creatures, of the righteous relations between 
them as the only ground of human character and 
hope, and of the immeasurable evil of sin that could 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. I43 

have been made at that stage of man's life. The 
promise is set in the midst of the denunciation of 
the tempter, as though to emphasize the complete- 
ness and hopelessness of his ruin and the final fail- 
ure of his craft and power. On the other hand, its 
terms stand out strongly against the judgment pro- 
nounced upon man as giving assurance that the 
triumph of the serpent over him should not be 
final; that even though he should return to the 
ground from which he was taken, he should yet 
recover his forfeited estate, and by subjection of 
the wicked one regain his lost dominion over all 
things. That his fall was not beyond recovery, 
that deliverance from sin and its effects was still 
possible, that a long, uncompromising conflict with 
sin must be sustained under the conditions of want 
and pain and death, and that victory should at last 
be achieved through the "seed of the woman " 
are the great principles which thenceforth gave 
direction to the thought and effort of men. The 
creation groaning and travailing in pain together 
until now, the weak, confused „ and blind endeav- 
ors of the world to shake off the burden of wretch- 
edness and find peace for the fearful and clamor- 
ous conscience, the indestructible thread of hope 
that runs through all the tangled web of human 
affairs, the restrictive and educative prescriptions 



144 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

and sanctions of law, and the glowing and ever- 
widening anticipations of prophecy, all show how 
profoundly these first principles wrought them- 
selves into the fiber and substance of our human 
life. The form of the provision was largely lost 
sight of. The " seed of the woman " was not re- 
tained in the thought and hope of the world, 
though still the readiness of men to follow any 
leader w r ho gave promise of a better life showed 
how intimately the world's hope was associated 
with belief in the possible achievement of an ex- 
ceptional human character. Sakya Muni, in the 
way of self-abnegation; Mohammed, in the way of 
self-assertion; and Confucius, as a leader in social 
and national ethics, are in evidence. But within 
the circle of religious life the truth of divine inter- 
position within the sphere and through the agency 
of human faculties was held fast and typified and 
illustrated in many great and successful lives, and 
became an inspiration and a power to the fore- 
most men of the race down to the time of its final 
realization in the Son of Man. 

In the course of the centuries the almost univer- 
sal disregard of the ethical character of penalty 
and promise, even after the judgment of the flood, 
made necessary a new statement in the form of a 
covenant. Under the terms of this covenant the 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. I45 

"seed of the woman" becomes the " seed of 
Abraham;" the chosen people, to which the line of 
descent is restricted, is set apart for God; and the 
provision for their special training and for the dis- 
charge of their high function in relation to God 
and man is set forth. They were to be the priests 
of the world. The land of their secluded life, 
their sanctuary of refuge and worship, was staked 
off, the disciplinary exile and captivity in Egypt 
foretold, and their increase and growth in spite 
of oppression and struggle were assured. The 
bruised heel, the toil, the pain, the death were the 
witness to the undying enmity between the serpent 
and this seed of the woman ; while the exodus 
from the land of slavery and the law under which 
the commonwealth was organized and the worship 
of the one true God was instituted and perpetuat- 
ed, the long line of prophets and saints, and the 
ever-increasing splendor of prophetic vision and 
announcement intensified the conviction that the 
victory should at last be won, and the head of the 
serpent be bruised by the Son of Man. 

It is unnecessary to follow the line of disclosure 
through all the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures. 
It is rarely lost to sight even in the midst of dark- 
est and most disheartening conditions. When Is- 
rael was at the lowest level, torn by distresses, 
10 



I46 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

doubts, and apostasies within, and broken and 
cast down by assaults without, elect men, the 
"remnant according to the election of grace," 
still clung to their faith in promise and covenant, 
and in jubilant tones proclaimed it to Israel, and 
held it forth as a standard for the nations. When 
the fullness of time was come, though the nation 
received him not, Zachariah and Elizabeth, and 
Mary, Simon and Anna, and John the Forerun- 
ner, and Nathanael, the " Israelite in whom was 
no guile," and still other true and simple souls, 
cherished the hope of the fathers, and looked for 
redemption. 

Along with the promise and the covenant there 
were manifestations of God in forms suited to the 
condition of men, declaring his constant oversight 
of human affairs and his unchanging purpose to do 
all that he had said. We need not trouble our- 
selves with the difficulties suggested to fastidious 
and sensitive natures by the anthropomorphisms of 
these early appearances. It would be hard to con- 
ceive of any way of approach to man more appro- 
priate to his character and better fitted to convey 
the truths intended to be taught. It was from the 
beginning affirmed that man was made after the 
likeness of God. It was a natural sequent that 
God should come near to man in the form which 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. I47 

presented that likeness in the region of nature and 
through the agencies of human speech and action 
reveal the vital relations between them. The ab- 
stractions of the intellect and the creations of the 
imagination will not serve as the basis of ethical 
life; and in proportion as they give form and sub- 
stance to the conceptions of God, they remove 
men from the sense of truth and reality in their 
relations to him. The theophanies may be imper- 
fect and defective, as must be all finite appear- 
ances; but they make the most direct appeal to 
human consciousness and the most profound im- 
pression upon the moral nature. They do, more- 
over, represent to us in forms which we can 
appreciate all that we conceive as highest, best, 
truest, in being and life; they declare self-con- 
sciousness and intelligence, righteousness, truth 
and love in combination with divine authority 
and oversight of human affairs. They have a 
special value to us as a prophetic indication of the 
form in which the last and complete revelation of 
God should be made. They point to "the man 
that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts," to that 
Son of Man who, standing in the midst of men 
with all the marks of our humanity upon him, 
could say: " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father." I venture to say that no more complete 



I48 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

manifestation of God can be made than is given in 
the person of him in whom " dwelleth all the full- 
ness of the Godhead bodily." In the light of the 
eternal day we shall have no more perfect vision 
of the Father than will be given us in the per- 
son of the glorified Son of Man when "we shall 
see him as he is." Certainly the God of Abra- 
ham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, who was " not 
ashamed to be called their God," thought it no 
dishonor to himself to come into converse with 
men upon the ground and within the limits of the 
nature which he had ordained for them. 

Under such impulses given and along the lines 
indicated in the promise, the covenant, and mani- 
festations of God to the fathers, the historical de- 
velopment of the chosen people prcceeded. It 
was not a continuous, uninterrrupted development. 
The Scriptures vindicate their own truthfulness by 
the fidelity with which they record the sins and fail- 
ures of the tribes, and their pronounced tendencies 
to break away from the restrictions and safeguards 
which God had put about them, and become like 
the nations that were around them. But " the 
gifts and calling of God were without repentance ;" 
and, while he suffered them to walk in their own 
ways, and left them to the penalties of their trans- 
gressions, he never litterly abandoned them, nor 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. I49 

withdrew his oversight and direction of their 
affairs, nor, indeed, did they entirely lose sight of 
their relation to him. They fretted under his dis- 
cipline, and revolted against his rule; but they al- 
ways claimed a special place in his regard, and in 
their seasons of distress they cried unto the God 
of their fathers. The whole course of their his- 
tory is full of illustration of the principles of divine 
administration, and furnishes type and instance in 
abundance of the power of righteousness and of 
the need and possibility of constant communica- 
tion with God. In times of extremity, when there 
was danger of the final apostasy of the nation, or 
of its complete overthrow, so that it should no 
longer stand as a witness to the world for him and 
his promise, God always interposed to avert the 
catastrophe. Notable instances are given in the 
plagues of Egypt and the judgment of the Red 
Sea, the giving of the law from Sinai, the destruc- 
tion of Sisera and his host, and in later times of 
Sennacherib and his army. These and many 
others arrested attention and gave assurance that 
in all the way of their life God was restraining, 
directing, and controlling, that he might keep the 
covenant made with the fathers. Not only was 
the hope of Israel thus kept alive in some measure 
among them, but there was always preserved a line 



150 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

of faithful men directly asserting God's right and 
authority over the people. They were the leaders 
and commanders of the people whose record is 
given in brief in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
These men were the special depositories of God's 
power, and conservators of his truth. They were 
not merely men of official standing. They were 
priests and prophets of the race by a higher pow- 
er than the law of a carnal commandment. When 
the priesthood had degenerated and prophets had 
become ministers to the will of a corrupt mon- 
archy, they preached righteousness, asserted the 
claims of God, by miracle if need were, and sus- 
tained the faith and encouraged the hope of the 
remnant that had not " bowed the knee to Baal." 
In all this there is the same marked reserve and 
economy of divine force and the same respect for 
the established order of things which has always 
and everywhere characterized the working of God. 
These Scriptures hold us constantly and firmly to 
the hard ground of common life, and show the 
plans of God wrought out through the regular 
processes of his providence. They insist upon 
the divine origin and relations of man, the divine 
order of the world, the divine direction of human 
affairs toward a predestined end — they charge all 
history heavily with the supernatural element; but 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 151 

they bring in no extraneous forces, and disclose 
exceptional operations of divine power only when 
exceptional pressure of evil imperatively required 
counterpoise and readjustment. The same prin- 
ciple is observed that was declared in our Lord's 
refusal of signs from heaven. Considering the 
long periods covered and the immense results 
sought, the use of the miracle, properly so called, 
is singularly rare. The exceptional men chosen 
for his purpose and brought into conscious com- 
munion with God, and commissioned and endowed 
for his work, were not lifted out of the current of 
human life and above the sense of human com- 
panionship. They were men of "like passions 
with ourselves," and subject to the vicissitudes 
and evil conditions of their time, nor were they 
lavish or extravagant in their expenditure of divine 
resources. They interfered with the ordinary 
course of events only when the necessities of the 
divine administration compelled them to do so. 
Beyond this they did not go. By them and by the 
special revelations of God it was intended to bring 
the people to a distinct understanding of the sanc- 
tity and high purpose of their life, and of their 
functions in relation to the world. 

Question has more than once been raised con- 
cerning the standard of righteousness to which hu- 



152 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

man character and conduct were referred before 
the Mosaic era. Later estimates of character, 
which have been framed under the influence and 
effect of formulated law and experience of its op- 
eration, as well as the largely improved instruction 
in its meaning and application, have taken but lit- 
tle account of the paucity of positive command- 
ments, and the indefiniteness of human relations 
incident thereto in this early period. But few 
things by which men could be judged stand out 
clearly defined until he came who is rightly known 
as the lawgiver. The nature and extent of ethical 
obligation were indicated clearly by the revelations 
which God made of himself. His earliest recorded 
approach to man was a declaration of his proprie- 
torship in all things, and his authority over his in- 
telligent creatures. "Thou mayest" and "thou 
shalt not" confer a privilege and impose a restraint. 
In form it was a commandment, the assertion of a 
supreme personal will exercising a conscious right. 
It was extended in the gift of dominion, putting 
man at the head of creation as the representative 
of his own rightful lord. Absolute subjection to 
the will of God and explicit obedience to his com- 
mand were thus taught as the principles of life. 
In the penalty of disobedience they found their 
sanction; while the terms of the promise, pointing 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 1 53 

to the undying enmity with the serpent, put him 
on guard and set him upon active and unceasing 
struggle against the powers of evil. One after 
another the great truths essential to man's life and 
relations to God were discovered and became 
dominant factors in the thought and life of the 
world. The faith of Abel discerned the place and 
meaning of sacrifice, and left it as a basis for all 
the religions of earth. To the perturbed mind of 
Cain his own sense of wrong was interpreted and 
conscience was thus assigned its place as the wit- 
ness to right or wrong within man and the warning 
against the approach and danger of sin. The faith 
of Enoch brought into immediate experience the 
immortality of man. Noah learned of providence 
and judgment, and in practical form preached 
righteousness as declared in them for a hundred 
and twenty years. Abraham gathered into his 
life all the elements of faith, and laid the founda- 
tions of the Church of the faithful upon a basis 
so broad that Paul could say the gospel was before 
preached to him. By this appeal to original in- 
stitutions, as in the case of marriage, our Lord 
has taught us to look to natural ordainments for the 
ground of natural morality, and given a divine 
sanction to the affections and relations of this life, 
and set the seal of righteous condemnation upon 



154 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the rupture and violation of them. We cannot 
now tell how far men then understood these things. 
We interpret them by the light of later days, and 
can hardly understand and sympathize with the 
conditions of those to whom the distinct statements 
of law and the formal exposition of its principles 
were wholly wanting. They must have known 
that fidelity to revealed and recognized obligation 
was the guarantee of the presence and counsel of 
God according to human need. It was in effect 
the rule of life given by our Lord: " If any man 
will do his will, he shall know the truth." On the 
other hand, the disregard of worship and obedi- 
ence and the free course given to natural passion 
and impulse obstructed the way of God's approach 
and led to blindness and ruin. These things agree 
with our understanding and experience of charac- 
ter. But to men of that time the application of 
these principles was not always clear, and had to 
be learned according to God's method: by proc- 
esses of discipline. It is not surprising, there- 
fore, that there were found along with a true faith 
in God and genuine devotion to him many trans- 
actions and lines of conduct quite at variance with 
our ethical standards. We condemn the lapse 
from truth in Abraham, and the intrigue and chi- 
canery of which Jacob was guilty. But by what 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 1 55 

known law could they be judged? They were 
both seeking the fulfillment of promises made by 
God, and had no legal statement to define these 
transgressions, and had not yet learned that man's 
way of working out God's counsels is sure to be 
the wrong way. j 

In all this life, principles rather than positive 
precepts, revelations in response to man's need and 
call rather than abrupt interference and violent re- 
straint, method of discipline through experience 
rather than enforced confinement to definite lines, 
were set forth as appropriate to human freedom 
and character. No needless burden was imposed. 
The "liberty" afterward restored under higher 
conditions was conceded as in the original charter 
of human rights. The free exercise of the facul- 
ties of man, made in the likeness of God, was per- 
mitted. It was part of the "wisdom of God" 
that the world should exhaust the resources of its 
own wisdom in the management of its affairs and 
the search after truth. 

The place and function of the law are sufficient- 
ly indicated by the foregoing statements. The 
degeneracy of the race, the increasing tendency to 
evil, the moral obtuseness and the disregard of 
judgment executed and threatened, put in peril 
the gracious purpose of God declared in the prom- 



156 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

ise and confirmed in the covenants with Abraham. 
More emphatic statement and more stringent 
measures for restraint and instruction were de- 
manded. " The law was added because of trans- 
gressions." The enslavement in Egypt and the 
deliverance with "the mighty hand, and the 
stretched out arm " were the divine discipline pre- 
paratory to the giving of the law. The whole pe- 
riod, from the time of the conspiracy of the sons of 
Jacob against Joseph, to the exodus, is illustrated 
in a brief record of incidents whose significance is 
tersely and clearly stated in Stephen's speech to 
the Jewish council. 

The awe and splendor of the descent of Jeho- 
vah upon Sinai gave the law its high sanctions and 
set Moses in his seat as its expounder and execu- 
tive. It was offered in this form that it might be 
known, not only as the rule of individual life and 
the basis of social and national polity, but, first of 
all, as the ground and condition of their relations 
to God. It got its value from its opening state- 
ment, " I am the Lord your God, which have 
brought you out of the land of Egypt," and re- 
ferred its ethical quality and its supreme authority 
to this assertion of the exclusive right and power 
of Jehovah over them. There was not then, as 
there never had been, the conception of moral 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 157 

character apart from divine relations; and it may 
as well be here noted that moral principles and 
moral life would never have been possible without 
some knowledge of God. 

The law so formulated was expanded and ap- 
plied on the religious side as a sacrificial and cere- 
monial system and on the secular side as a civil 
polity. In its entirety it is a theocracy, demand- 
ing the reference of the entire life of the people 
immediately to the will and commandment of God. 

Its central feature was the priesthood. Under 
it the people received the law; rather were organ- 
ized or constituted as a people according to law. 
The priestly element pervaded and dominated the 
whole economy. It finds place in the separation 
of the nation from the common, secular purposes 
and conditions of other peoples, and the assign- 
ment to them of special character and functions in 
relation to God and the world. They were de- 
clared to be a "kingdom of priests and a holy 
nation." It is expressed with more emphasis in 
the establishment of a priestly caste, which should 
be to the nation what the nation was intended to 
be to the world. Instead of the firstborn from all 
the tribes of Israel, the tribe of Levi was set apart 
for priestly function and the service of the sanc- 
tuary. It was carried to a higher consecration in 



T58 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the persons of Aaron and his sons, a family set apai 
to minister at the altars, draw near to God, and 
declare the mind of God to the people. Of this 
family one was set apart as high priest, with ex- 
ceptional prerogative and exclusive right of en- 
trance into the holiest place of all, the seat of the 
Shekinah, the visible representative of Jehovah. 
The conception of holiness as essential to the re- 
lation to God was carried in all its degrees through 
the priestly nation, tribe, and family, until it cul- 
minated in the person of the high priest. With 
each remove from the wider life without the exac- 
tion as to person, character, and conduct became 
more minute and thorough, so that finally the 
ideal of possible perfection was reached in the 
high priest, who alone could come into the imme- 
diate presence of God. By thus continually nar- 
rowing the circle and enhancing the requirement 
as they were brought nearer to God, the concep- 
tion of the holiness of God was intensified and 
exalted. 

The sacrificial system is inseparably united with 
the priesthood. The priest was ordained to offer 
gifts and sacrifices for sin. The offering, what- 
ever its distinctive character, was in recognition of 
the absolute right of God in the man, and of the 
sin, the weakness, the failure of the man, and 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 159 

represented confession, self-dedication, and atone- 
ment, besides the eucharistic meat offering and 
peace offering. By expiation, self-dedication, and 
worship, the sin that separated man from God was 
put away and renounced and the way of approach 
to God was opened. The priestly character was 
thus declared and secured. 

The ceremonial system included the declaration 
and use of places and things and times as holy — 
devoted to God. Of all these time would fail to 
tell. The worth and meaning of them are more 
than suggested in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
which, as an exposition of the principles of the 
old economy, and the link of connection between 
that and the new, stands unrivaled and alone. 
Their purpose, together with the limitations of 
them, is intimated by St. Paul in his references to 
them when discussing the great features of the 
gospel, and especially in the Epistle to the Gala- 
tians and the cautionary passages of the Epistle to 
the Colossians. The tabernacle — later in Jewish 
history the temple — the ark of the covenant, and 
the Passover were the highest formal expressions 
of sanctity, and reflected their sacredness and dig- 
nity upon the people to whom they pertained. 

The civil polity represented the application of 
these elements to the common life of the nation 4t as 



l6o THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

they were able to bear it." The abominations of 
the Gentiles were carefully excluded. Every pos- 
sible provision was made for the direction of indi- 
vidual conduct and for household order and the 
training of the young. The relations between per- 
sons, families, and tribes were established upon the 
basis of purity and mutual helpfulness. Offenses 
that threatened the supreme authority of Jehovah, 
or violated the relations essential to the integrity 
of the commonwealth as established upon the basis 
of divine order were punished with death. Others 
suffered graded penalties, for the most part ac- 
cording to the law of relation {lex lalionis). Where 
pardon was possible sacrifices were required and 
the priests gave absolution. The minuteness of 
detail in every department expressed the jealous 
care with which God guarded the integrity of 
personal, family, social, and national life on the 
secular side, so as to bring it into perfect adjust- 
ment and conformity to the high ideal expressed 
in priestly life and service. 

The breadth and reach of this law have been 
discerned by a few of the better minds of later 
times. They have seen that the great lawgiver 
" builded better than he knew" and established 
principles and framed institutions which should 
furnish the basis and suggest the methods of all 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. l6l 

right government and sound relations, national and 
international, for the ages to come. As our civ- 
ilization advances and the conditions of life are 
better adjusted we come nearer to the old Mosaic 
econom}', enter into truer sympathy with its aims 
and plans, and gain a higher appreciation of the di- 
vine order there declared in the terms and materi- 
als of our natural life. 

The limitations and inadequacy of all this ar- 
rangement are apparent. The promise, the cove- 
nant, and the manifold manifestations of God lay 
back of it and constituted its motive. They were 
not canceled or forgotten; but the degeneracy of 
the race compelled more precise and definite ex- 
pression of them within narrow limits. It was an 
attempt to declare in outward symbolic form the 
things that no human speech could utter and no 
earthly semblance could set forth. Moses was 
called away from all earthly associations and shut 
up in the solitude of the mountain alone with God. 
The things in the heavens were there showed to 
him — the great divine order of administration 
stretching through all the years of the future and 
culminating in " the city that hath the founda- 
tions," the vision of whose glory had afore been 
vouchsafed to Abraham. We can hardly question 

that, in those forty days when he talked face to 
11 



1 62 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

face with God, he was granted, in order to the ful- 
fillment of his high commission, a deep insight into 
and a true understanding of the great revelations 
made before to his fathers. When the long con- 
verse with God was ended and his instruction com- 
pleted, he was sent down to reproduce in visible 
form and with earthly material the things that he 
had seen. " See," said He, " that thou make all 
things according to the pattern showed to thee in 
the mount." A grander design than was ever 
traced in the mind of the great architect of the 
Roman cathedral (St. Peter's) was drawn with 
the splendor of the eternal light before him; the 
wealth and genius of all Israel were laid under 
contribution, and the result was a tent of badgers' 
skins in the wilderness. It was a fit type and sug- 
gestion of the insufficiency of the legal economy 
to declare the whole counsel of God, to show his 
righteousness, love, and truth to men — to all men. 
" The law made nothing perfect." 

Notwithstanding this, there were men who 
transcended the limits imposed by legal prescrip- 
tion, and caught glimpses of the higher truth sug- 
gested by these parables. Like Moses himself, 
they were not content with the wonders of Sinai, 
the pillar of cloud and fire, Israel's visible guide, 
and the cloud of glory that covered the tabernacle ; 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 163 

but with diviner insight and deeper longing urged 
their importunate prayer: " I beseech thee, show 
me thy glory." In no mean sense they were prod- 
ucts of the law, for without the law they had 
been impossible, and gave sure token of what the 
law as a revelation, with its restrictive, educative, 
and suggestive qualities, could do though it was 
weak through the flesh. Disparage and depreci- 
ate it as we may, the system that could produce men 
of such mold and stature as those whose meas- 
urements are given us in Hebrew song and psalm, 
in proverb and prophetic teaching, and in achiev- 
ments whose results have outlasted the centuries 
and have become incorporate in the best life of 
the modern world is not to be lightly esteemed. 
Such men were the true forerunners of the elect 
band who were found watching at the advent of 
the incarnate Son, and in their faithful and glad 
hearts made a home for him when in the midst of 
the wild, turbulent, hostile elements of the world 
he had not where to lay his head. 

Men of this sort made possible the introduction 
and permanent incorporation into the life of the 
nation of prophecy, the last, highest, and most 
potent factor in the economy of preparation. It 
was not an absolutely new feature of divine opera- 
tion. The prophetic element, as already said, in- 



164 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

hered in history, in virtue of its divine relations and 
of the divine oversight and direction which were 
never quite wanting in human affairs. It appeared 
as occasion required in exceptional men who rec- 
ognized the hand of God in the course of events 
and announced his purpose and will. It gave 
their character and meaning to the legal dispensa- 
tion and the life of the chosen people. It culmi- 
nated in the special provision of a personal pro- 
phetic power and function announced by the 
lawgiver himself. " The Lord thy God will raise 
up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of 
thy brethren, like unto me: unto him ye shall 
hearken. According to all that thou desiredst of 
the Lord thy God in Horeb in the day of the as- 
sembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice 
of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great 
fire any more, that I die not. And the Lord said 
unto me, They have well spoken that which they 
have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from 
among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put 
my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto 
them all that I shall command him. And it shall 
come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto 
my words which he shall speak in my name, I will 
require it of him.'' 

Its first intent was to guard against and offset 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 165 

the unhallowed practices of the nations whom the 
Lord cast out before them. In their eagerness to 
search out the unseen and pry into the future they 
used divination, enchantments, witchcraft, and 
sought unto necromancers and wizards. To re- 
press this profane curiosity — from which even the 
enlightened mind of our own day is not entirely 
free, as witness those relics of heathenism known 
as clairvoyance, spiritualistic seances, and the 
like — and to keep them within the limits of per- 
missible and fruitful revelation, God provided for 
his people a line of prophets whose word should 
be authoritative and final. It was further intend- 
ed to relieve them from the awe and terror attend- 
ant upon such immediate manifestations of God 
as gave sanction to the law at Sinai; and put the 
words of God into the mouths of men, that the 
channels of our common nature might become the 
ways of conveyance for the truth and righteous- 
ness and power of God. Prophecy thus comes 
out of its elementary provisional and fragmentary 
period and assumes the highest functions known 
in the theocratic state. It interprets promise, cov- 
enant, and law, lays its command upon priest, king, 
and people, denounces judgment and even gives 
assurance of pardon where law refuses remission 
and demands death. Its terms are not limited by 



l66 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the prescriptions of the Mosaic institute, and its 
vision is not confined to the needs and fortunes of 
the Jewish nation. It stands with Isaiah at the 
threshold of the temple and, though throngs of 
priests minister at the altars and the smoke of in- 
cense pervades the sacred spaces and the chant of 
the choir resounds in the air, it sees naught but 
the Lord sitting upon his lofty throne and his 
train filling the temple, and hears nothing but the 
music of the seraph's song and the voice of the 
Lord saying: " Who will go for us? " It was set 
over the nations and over the kingdoms to pluck 
up and to pull down and to destroy and to build 
and to plant. It gathered up the divergent lines 
of human history and blended them in one in the 
issues of the distant future. It discharged its 
final function and completed its work when it 
turned back to the terms of its own institution and 
proclaimed their fulfillment in the person of the 
Lord's Anointed, Son of Man, Prophet, Priest, 
and King of the race. Upon the manifold phases 
of his character and person, and the purpose and 
effect of his work, it lavished the wealth of its im- 
agery and exhausted the resources of thought. 
In divers degrees and in their varied forms of ac- 
tion and speech all the prophets contributed to the 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 167 

one supreme end; and, drawing in the scattered 
elements of promise and history, covenant and 
law, united them in the " man of sorrows . . 
bruised for our iniquities," who was yet the 
"Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the 
Prince of peace." When that final word had 
been spoken and the vision perfected, the voice of 
prophecy was hushed and heard no more until the 
very presence among men of him 6i of whom 
Moses in the law and the prophets did write" 
once more awoke the slumbering sense of the 
world, and the forerunner could say: " He stand- 
eth among you." 

I have here only amplified the brief record of 
the use made by Peter and Stephen of the pro- 
phetic promise and provision. It was the promise 
of full divine utterance through a human person- 
ality to find its last and complete fulfillment in the 
Son of Man, " in whom dwelleth all the fullness of 
the Godhead bodily." The holy men of old spake 
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and even 
so their speech was not final and perfect. It was 
anticipatory, prophetic, consciously directed to 
coming generations. It became broader and 
deeper from age to age, like the waters of Ezeki- 
el's vision that issued out from under the threshold 



l68 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

of the temple and gave the life of hope to the na- 
tions. God who spake by the prophets hath at the 
last spoken by the Son. The final, perfect, au- 
thoritative word is heard. It confirms and is con- 
firmed by all that went before. "And it shall 
come to pass that every soul, which will not hear 
that Prophet, shall be destroyed from among the 
people." 

Avoiding all the questions that may be raised by 
skeptical inquiry — and which, besides being ir- 
relevant to the purpose of this discussion, would 
require more elaborate treatment than my time will 
allow — we have followed the course of revelation 
from its beginning, indicating its character and 
noting its contents, that we may find its bearing 
upon and relation to the final manifestation of God 
in Jesus Christ. If our reading has been true, the 
entire record points in one direction. Its germ of 
life comes to flower and fruit in him " who is our 
life." Its incompleteness is supplemented by the 
all-inclusive word of him who spake as never man 
spake. In their due order of succession, the 
promise, the covenant, the law and the prophets 
did their work, each carrying forward the line 
handed down to it by its predecessors until the 
great representatives of the entire line, Moses and 



THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. 169 

Elias, surrendered their prerogatives to him whose 
decease, " which he should accomplish at Jerusa- 
lem, "should bring to an end vision and prophecy, 
fulfill all promise, and vindicate the word heard 
from heaven: "This is my beloved Son; hear 
him." 









LECTURE V, 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 

(171) 



V. 

THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 

" But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you 
from the Father, even the Spii-it of truth, which proceedeth from 
the Father, he shall testify of me." John xv. 26. 

THE world was about to enter upon the last stage 
of the long conflict between the serpent and 
the seed of the woman. The enmity became more 
pronounced as the words and works of the Son of 
Man gave more full and complete illustration of 
the righteous and gracious purpose of God, and 
evinced itself in an intenser hate and a more ma- 
lignant persecution. The issue was soon to be 
joined at the cross; and the event to be determined 
in other regions, where through death he should 
destroy him that had the power of death, and de- 
clared to the world by the resurrection from the 
dead. Nor was the world's hate even then to be 
satisfied. It was to stand in the same attitude of 
antagonism to his disciples and let fly against them 
the same fiery darts of persecution. To them, in 
the absence of their Master, the fortunes of the 
struggle would seem doubtful, if not hopeless. 

The majesty of his presence and his absolute 

(173) 



174 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

command of all the resources of earth and heaven 
had sustained and assured them, and they had 
learned to depend entirely upon him. Against the 
combined forces of earth and hell the powers com- 
mitted to them would without him seem to be alto- 
gether inadequate. He gives them no promise of 
relief or respite from the strife. The world would — 
for his name's sake, because it knew not him that 
sent him — do to them as it had done to him. Over 
against this sin and hate and persecution of the 
world he set the testimony of the Comforter — the 
Paraclete — which should be their strength and 
guarantee of success. It is the final provision for 
his Church, the exhaustion of his resources in the 
assertion of his right and the extension of his 
kingdom. 

It is no disparagement or depreciation of the 
foregoing plan and movement of God that brings 
us, in the development of our faith, to this prom- 
ise of our Lord as the strength of the Church and 
the last hope of men. It is but in recognition of 
the fact that the proportions of the struggle trans- 
cend the possible calculations of men and require 
for its continuance and for the final success of the 
Son of Man an abiding energy of divine power 
quite equal to all that was at his command and un- 
embarrassed by the limitations and hindrances of his 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 1 75 

incarnate life. We have seen in the record already 
made how insufficient to effect the purpose of God 
was all the marvelous wealth of revelation and ac- 
tion that had been lavished upon men. As the re- 
sult of it we have the terse statement of the evan- 
gelist: "He [the Word] was in the world, and the 
world was made by him, and the world knew him 
not. He came unto his own, and his own received 
him not." More than that, the men whom he had 
chosen out of the world, to whom he had given 
the words that his Father had given him and made 
known all things w r hich he had heard from his Fa- 
ther, and had said, "Ye have loved me and have 
believed that I came out from God," when the 
hour of his trial came, forsook him and fled, and 
were scattered every man to his own. His per- 
sonal presence and teaching and their faith and the 
love they had for him were not sufficient to save 
them from this shameful lapse. Not yet were they 
made perfect. 

Nor is it as a desperate resort, failing all else, 
that we are driven to this last refuge and hope for 
the faith of the world. Rather it was in contem- 
plation from the beginning and incorporated as an 
indispensable factor in the plan of God and was 
the complement, in the order and experience of 
human life, of the incarnation. In the old rec- 



176 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

ords the Spirit of God was the suggested ground 
of the law and life of the world and the declared 
source of prophetic inspiration, and takes his place 
at the last as the fulfillment of that which was spo- 
ken by the prophet Joel: " It shall come to pass 
in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my 
spirit upon all flesh." It is in perfect agreement 
with all that we know of the thoughts and ways of 
God that every element in his life, every personal- 
ity of his being, should be participant in his work 
of building up and redeeming the worlds. " Here 
the whole Deity is known." 

The place which the Holy Spirit fills in the life 
of the Son of Man is briefly but suggestively stat- 
ed. He was the immediate agent in the incarna- 
tion. " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, 
and the power of the Highest shall overshadow 
thee " is the announcement of the angel, upon 
which is founded the article of the Church's con- 
fession, " Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, 
born of the Virgin Mary." John's testimony at the 
baptism was the product of the word of God and 
the appearance of the Spirit: " He that sent me 
to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon 
whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and re- 
maining on him, the same is he which baptizeth 
with the Holy Ghost," According to this witness, 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 1 77 

the Spirit not only abides upon Christ to give as- 
surance of his possession of all the fullness of the 
Godhead, but remains at his disposal to effectuate 
the baptism of all whom the Son shall send him. 
In his later ministry our Lord promises that from 
him that believeth on him rivers of living waters 
shall flow, which he spoke, the evangelist says, of 
the Spirit which they that believe on him should 
receive, but which was not to be imparted until he 
himself was glorified. As the time of his ascen- 
sion drew near he dwelt more at length upon the 
coming of the Comforter, and explicitly declared 
his relations to the Father and himself, and as- 
signed him his functions in relation to the world 
and the Church. 

1. The name given him by our Lord is ren- 
dered " Comforter " in our version, which may be 
used very properly in the old English sense of the 
word before it became synonymous with " con- 
soler." 

It has come to be much used in its Anglicized 

form — Paraclete — which, as not misleading, may 

be a better designation, but has the disadvantage 

of not being understood by the general reader. 

It is once used by John in his first Epistle: " If 

any man sin, we have an advocate [Paraclete] 

with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." We 
12 



178 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

are justified in giving it the same signification in 
the Gospel that it bears in the Epistle. It follows 
that the Spirit, as the IlapdxXyjtog, represents 
Christ before men as Christ, in virtue of his pro- 
pitiation, represents men before the Father; that 
he advocates his claims and asserts his rights: 
and as Christ speaks of him as his own substitute, 
" another Comforter," the meaning counselor, 
instructor, may be added. 

2. Christ, the Son, sends him. He is distinctly 
and exclusively the messenger and representative 
of the Son, and undertakes nothing apart from 
him, or outside of the limits of his mediatorial life 
and work. He is at one with the Son as the Son 
is with the Father, and as entirely given to do the 
will of him that sent him as is the Son. " He 
shall not speak of himself,' 7 said Christ; "but 
whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. . . . 
He shall glorify me? for he shall receive of mine, 
and shall show it unto you." The vague concep- 
tion of a benignant spiritual influence operating 
upon the hearts of men, as the fitful breezes of 
summer move upon their oppressed and languid 
frames, without distinct purpose or method, is 
thoroughly disposed of by this sharply defined 
commission to personal service in exclusive rela- 
tion to the purpose and work of the Son of God. 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 1 79 

3. He is sent from the Father; he proceedeth 
from the Father. He has his being in the unity 
of the Godhead, with the Son from the Father, 
the " fountain of Godhead." The Son is the 
" only begotten of the Father;" the Spirit " pro- 
ceedeth from the Father." The Son is sent by 
the Father; the Spirit is sent by the Father and 
the Son. For here our Lord says, " Whom I 
shall send from the Father;" while in a former 
promise he says, "Whom the Father will send in 
my name." In both places his indissoluble rela- 
tion with the Son is affirmed, while his original 
unity of being with the Father is proclaimed. 

4. He is the Spirit of truth. The title indicates 
that truth is not a matter of formal statement and 
outward relations to be expressed in creeds and 
symbols and confessions of faith. It lies deeper. 
It has vital quality and takes its beginning in the 
relations of the Godhead. It is here, as elsewhere 
in our Lord's sayings, "the truth." "The Spir- 
it of the truth" is the reading. "To this end 
was I born, and for this cause came I into the 
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. 
Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." 
In this, his only vindication of himself before Pi- 
late, Christ lifts the truth out of the sphere of this 
world's life and declares the incompetency of the 



l8o THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

natural understanding to originate or apprehend 
it. He does not attempt to convey it through 
mere words. He speaks the truth and nothing 
but the truth; but "the words that I speak unto 
you, they are spirit and they are life." "The 
flesh profiteth nothing." "It is the Spirit that 
quickeneth." His final expression of the truth is 
himself: " I am the way, the truth, and the life." 
The truth as it is in the eternal relations of the 
Godhead, and as it is expressed in the person of 
the Son, is committed to the Spirit, who will 
" guide you into all the truth." He is the perpet- 
ual guarantee to the Church of God of the posses- 
sion and final understanding and realization of all 
the truth. 

5. " He shall testify of me." From the day of 
his ascension the voice of the Son of Man was 
heard no more among men. On the way to Da- 
mascus and in the temple at Jerusalem Paul saw 
him and heard his voice ; and in Patmos John 
had the vision of his glorified form as he walked 
in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, and 
received from him the messages to the seven 
churches. But these belonged to the realm of 
spiritual things. The men who journeyed with 
Saul saw indeed the light, but heard no articulate 
utterance; Paul was in a trance in the temple; 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. IS I 

and John was in the Spirit. Only through the 
Spirit's agency were such conditions and revela- 
tions possible. Henceforth the Son was to be 
known only through the Spirit. 

In the terms of the gospel the testimony of the 
Spirit is borne to the world and to his disciples. 
In both spheres he follows the line of direction 
given in the life, teaching, and work of the Son of 
Man. As the Son did nothing of himself, but 
availed himself of law and prophecy and the 
whole body of divine revelation that went before 
his coming, so the Spirit made no independent 
disclosures, but brought into clearer light and ef- 
fective operation the word and life of the Son. 
In like manner, as the Son commenced his minis- 
try with the few faithful men, John's disciples, 
who were prepared to receive him, so the first 
sphere of the Spirit's operation was with the body 
of believers instructed and trained by the Lord 
himself. 

It is well to note again, in this last period of di- 
vine movement upon the world, how jealously 
God abstains from irregular and abnormal meth- 
ods of dealing with men. We have seen how 
from the first he held himself in reserve, and while 
ready to bring forth the illimitable resources of 
his divine nature, if the necessities of the case de- 



l82 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

manded them, yet adjusted his work to the condi- 
tions and needs of men, and found within the lim- 
its of our human life the means best fitted to 
achieve his ends. Agencies for working out his 
purpose were multiplied and enhanced in efficien- 
cy with the growth of the world in experience and 
its advance in knowledge and thought. The 
powers of mind and life approached more nearly 
to the supernatural, and the need for the introduc- 
tion of forces beyond the possible measurements 
of men and for special interferences of God be- 
came less frequent and less urgent. We can take 
the lesson from our own later history. Ten cen- 
turies ago it would have required a series of stu- 
pendous miracles to bring about results that enter 
into the common experience of our daily life. It 
is not with the purpose of depreciating the super- 
natural or driving it farther away from the thought 
and consciences of men that these suggestions are 
made. Just the contrary is true. For my part, 
holding, as I do, that nature itself is divinely con- 
stituted and cannot but be closely akin to and per- 
vaded by the supernatural element, and that every 
forward movement in human history and experi- 
ence has its origin and impulse in the purpose and 
power of God, I cannot but be convinced that our 
life of to-day is more thoroughly pervaded by su- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 183 

pernatural forces than was ever any age of mira- 
cle. The eye may not see and the ear may not 
hear it; but the truest and most real things do not 
make their voices to be heard in the streets, and 
are not blazoned in lines of fire across the sky. I 
do not believe in " natural law in the spiritual 
world," but I have an invincible faith in spiritual 
law in the natural world. In taking account, 
therefore, of the Spirit's work, while recognizing 
the added resources furnished in the incarnation 
and the enlarged power of human life, we need 
not go beyond the ordered methods of divine ac- 
tion known in all previous history. 

In pursuance of the same line the operation of 
the Spirit was, first, upon and within the body of 
believers. To these men the promise was given. 
It was a special gift and endowment for their per- 
sonal guidance and strengthening, and to fit them 
for the performance of their functions as, in their 
turn, witnesses to Christ. They were designated 
and prepared for the reception of the Spirit by the 
significant action of the risen Lord in the exercise 
of his newly acquired power: "He breathed on 
them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost." It was the breath of the resurrection 
life. It was a guarantee of the fulfillment of the 
promise. The Spirit could and would come into 



184 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the atmosphere of this new life and abide with 
them forever. " He dwelleth with you, and shall 
be in you." The Holy Spirit accordingly began 
his special ministry by coming into direct personal 
communion with the chosen believers and appro- 
priating and setting them apart for their Lord's 
service. On the day of Pentecost " they were 
all with one accord in one place. And suddenly 
there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing 
mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they 
were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven 
tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of 
them. And they were all filled with the Holy 
Ghost." The immediate effect was a distinct and 
infallible recognition of the Spirit. The appear- 
ances as of fire would recall the words of John the 
Baptist, " He shall baptize you with the Holy 
Ghost and with fire." But the cloven tongues 
only sat upon them while they were filled with the 
Spirit. They made no reference to these, but 
rather turned at once to the " more sure word of 
prophecy," " This is that which was spoken by 
the prophet Joel," and declared its fulfillment with 
the emphasis of absolute conviction. The misun- 
derstanding, hesitancy, and uncertainty which had 
so often appeared during their intercourse with 
their incarnate Lord were put away forever. The 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 1 85 

perplexity, bewilderment, skepticism, and hostility 
of the multitude who came together at the hearing 
of the sound had no effect upon them. The con- 
scious indwelling of the Holy Spirit, making 
himself known within them, was their introduction 
to the realm of spiritual life where doubt and dis- 
trust have no place. 

It cannot be questioned that our Lord intended 
to give the strongest possible assurance of the real- 
ity of his person and the validity of his claims. 
The care and thoroughness with which he accu- 
mulated the testimonies to himself; the fullness 
with which he instructed his disciples in them ; and 
his deep, divine yearning for the salvation of men 
would be but futile and hopeless labor and sorrow 
unless he could leave in the world a permanent, in- 
fallible witness, of equal authority with himself, au- 
thenticated by himself and, like himself, self-attest- 
ing, and at the same time,. witnessed to by the law 
and the prophets. He had ample experience, among 
even the best men, of their dullness and slowness 
of heart to believe. Rabbinism gave him sugges- 
tion of the extremes to which higher criticism 
might go in its handling of the sacred records. 
The degeneracy and failure of the Mosaic economy 
gave sure sign of the incompetency of any mere 
human institution, even though it had a divine 



l86 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

origin, to perpetuate the facts and power of his 
life and work unimpaired and uncorrupted. Nor 
could he hope that any ecclesiastical succes- 
sion, however thoroughly furnished at the outset 
and however maintained,, would, by order, symbol, 
ritual, and ceremony, preserve the truth and con- 
serve the results of his labor, passion, and death. 
His indifference to all these during his life on 
earth prove clearly enough that he never intended 
to commit the fortunes of his Church and the is- 
sues of his mediation to any such keeping. If he 
had so willed it, the order, succession, and cere- 
monial of Judaism, freed from its animal sacrifices, 
would have served his purpose better than its late 
and feeble imitations. It had an unquestioned di- 
vine origin, a line of priestly succession reaching 
far back into the ages of history, traditions of un- 
rivaled splendor, and was the rightful and divinely 
appointed custodian of the " oracles of God." 
But himself pronounced the sentence of destruc- 
tion upon the temple and the polity, and without 
one written instruction for the faith or order of his 
Church, sent forth a few unlettered men to preach 
his gospel, with sure confidence and unerring pre- 
vision that through their word and work he should 
in the end " see the travail of his soul, and shall be 
satisfied." For he left with them a truer witness 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 187 

and a mightier power than temple and priesthood, 
law and prophecy, even the Spirit of truth, which 
should abide with them forever. 

The witness becomes the more impressive from 
the fact that it was an appeal to the individual con- 
sciousness, not to the body corporate. They did 
not acquire the certainty of their conviction from 
the sound which all heard, nor from the sight of 
the cloven tongues. Of these last it is said, " It 
sat upon each of them," as though to emphasize 
the separate interest and endowment imparted. 
The more direct and sufficient ground of their 
certainty was that " they were all filled v/ith the 
Holy Ghost." The body corporate was to be 
composed of men, to each of whom the Spirit 
gave the indubitable witness. In the nature of 
the case it must be so. Whatever may be the 
value and power of a general directing influence 
and overruling hand, such as the providence of 
God, it cannot satisfy the demand of the heart for 
immediate communion with God, or supply the 
need of elevated, devoted lives, evincing their 
sense of divine companionship, and using the 
powers of the world to come for the work of this 
world. 

It is part of the record here that they were all 
filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak 



l88 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utter- 
ance. No representative of the body assumed ex- 
clusive right and function. Each gave proof of 
his personal possession of the Spirit and declared 
his consequent power by personal participation in 
the work. The same was observed when the gos- 
pel was preached to Cornelius, and was so distinct- 
ly recognized in the life of the Church that Paul 
did not hesitate to put the question to some of 
John's disciples as the test of their relations to the 
Son of God, " Have ye received the Holy Ghost 
since ye believed?" Nor according to the faith 
and practice of that time could any ceremonial act, 
or form of confession, or ecclesiastical association, 
or excellence of ethical character supply the place 
of the conscious possession of the Holy Spirit. 

The Spirit, further, in a still higher sense than 
the Master had done, but following his order of 
movement, "opened their understanding." The 
great Teacher brought the resources of his won- 
derful person to bear upon his disciples, spoke as 
never man spoke, and added the power of his 
works to the instruction he gave them. But by the 
conditions of the incarnation he was compelled to 
use the languages of earth and speak through or- 
gans of flesh. It is impossible from the level of 
our time to estimate the full effect of his training. 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 1 89 

On the one side we note their failures and give 
heed to his words of reproof, and are disposed to 
undervalue the elevation and enlargement of mind 
and character resulting from their association with 
him. On the other hand, however, we must not 
forget that they acquired a knowledge of truth in 
spiritual things and an insight into his character 
that were shared by no other men of their time, and 
that after his final teaching during the days of his 
resurrection life, they only of all men were fitted 
to be the recipients and depositories of his Spirit. 
His work was taken up by the Spirit at this ad- 
vanced stage and carried forward to completion. 
The Holy Ghost came to them from the divine side, 
and addressed himself immediately to the spirit 
of man in them. His entrance was as the touch 
of the Son of Man to blind eyes, or his voice to the 
dead. It was the awakening and release of slum- 
bering and imprisoned faculties. The power of 
spiritual discernment was conferred that they 
might know the things that were given them of 
God. They not only, like the prophets, saw a new 
and higher meaning in life and all things about 
them, but they perceived the divine elements and 
spiritual forces expressed and intimated in all the 
complex and mysterious life of the Son of Man 
with which they had been so long and intimately 



I9O THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

associated. The things which none of the princes 
of this world knew, which eye had not seen, nor 
ear heard, and which had not entered into the 
heart of man, were revealed unto them by the 
Spirit. For the Spirit did only what Christ had 
promised. He made no new disclosures. He 
brought nothing down out of the heavens that had 
not come before. He took the things of Christ 
and showed them to them, and brought all things 
to their remembrance whatsoever he had said to 
them. In the Spirit — if I may use in this connec- 
tion John's suggestive phrase — he showed them 
all the scenes and transactions of that memorable 
career, as they were looked upon from the height 
of the throne. They could recognize the Lord of 
angelic worship in the midst of the lowly sur- 
roundings of the stable at Bethlehem; the victor 
for our race in the worn and wasted combatant 
with the devil in the wilderness ; the righful heir of 
all this goodly inheritance in the footsore and 
weary wanderer by Jacob's well; the titled owner 
of all things in the Son of Man who had not where 
to lay his head. Moses and Elias on Hermon's 
height were but girded servants waiting at the 
gates of the opened heavens to give greeting to the 
coming Son, while the voice of the Father from 
the cloud of his glory saluted and honored him in 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 191 

his native right. The cross was but the gateway 
to the grave — the arena of his final victory over 
him that had the power of death. The resurrec- 
tion life was the outer court to the eternal temple 
where he had both worlds in his grasp, one hand 
holding the scepter of his priestly rule over all 
things, while reaching forth the other that the lov- 
ing though doubting disciple might put his finger 
in the print of the nail. Though they had known 
Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth they 
could know him so no more. The Spirit had 
shown him to them. So, too, he brought to their 
minds all things that he had said unto them in fa- 
miliar conversation and public speech, parable, 
sermon, and prophecy, the interpretations of na- 
ture and the expositions of scripture, and gave 
them to see meanings that had never appeared to 
their natural understandings. The words were 
lost in the realities, the letter in the spirit. The 
variations in gospel narrative and record are not 
to be wondered at. The things he said, not the 
words he uttered, were brought to remembrance, 
and each man, from his own point of view in the 
spiritual realm, reproduced them with absolute 
fidelity to " the truth " and with small concern for 
the earthen vessel of human speech in which it 
was conveyed. Yet they were words taught by 



I92 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the Holy Ghost, and could not but be true to the 
divine, deeper meaning of the Lord's teaching. 

For, here, it is well to consider that the first 
outward effect of the gift of the Spirit was upon 
their speech. They at once began to speak, and 
as the Spirit gave them utterance. Not only was 
their stock of language multiplied, but words ap- 
peared in new relations and assumed higher sig- 
nificance. They were no longer mere articulate 
sounds, but living forces. From that time their 
speech and preaching were not with persuasive 
words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of 
the Spirit and of power. The dull and difficult 
vocables of earth were transformed into distinct, 
startling, quickening, and convincing voices from 
heaven. They preached the gospel — as it ought 
always to be preached — with the Holy Ghost sent 
down from heaven. 

To this certainty of conviction, opened under- 
standing, and transfigured speech was added the 
gift of power. ' In part it may be attributed to the 
sense of personal elevation and transformation in- 
volved in such effects. By the marvelous baptism 
they had been transferred to a sphere of life 
where they were consciously beyond the power of 
mere earthly conditions, and at the command and 
under the dominion of their Lord only. They 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. I93 

possessed and wielded forces unknown to the 
princes of this world — the powers of the world to 
come. The feeblest and most timid w r ould be em- 
boldened by such consciousness, to dare enter- 
prises and face difficulties before which the 
bravest, broadest, and most far-seeing minds of 
earth would stagger and shrink away discomfited 
and defeated. 

But more than this was intended. Christ had 
promised the gift of power as a special endowment 
after that the Holy Ghost had come upon them. 
It was an attribute of the divine nature which was 
imparted to them, strengthening their souls and 
encouraging them in the seasons of peril and suf- 
fering; it was, also, that offset to and provision 
against the destructive power of the world's sin, 
hate, and persecution which should effectuate their 
efforts and insure success- It was this conscious- 
ness of power not their own, which set them, with 
the confidence of preordained success and with 
never a note of hesitancy or uncertainty in their 
utterance, upon what to the timid and halting 
Church of to-day seems a desperate undertaking, 
the establishment of their Lord's rule in all the 
earth. Nothing was too vast, or too great. " I 
can do all things through Christ which strength- 

eneth me." 
13 



194 TH E WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

These were the first and decisive operations of 
the Spirit in fulfillment of the promise of the Son 
of God. They furnished the Church with the es- 
sentials for its work in the world, with the safe- 
guards necessary for the maintenance of its integ- 
rity, and with the guarantee for its final success. 
They had a further significance. They were the 
formal assertion and assumption by the Holy 
Ghost of his right as the sole accredited and au- 
thorized representative of Jesus Christ in the 
Church and administrator of its affairs. He set 
the seal of proprietorship upon every believer. 
He took control of thought, conscience, heart. 
They were filled with him. In apostolic days the 
formula of Christian decree was: " It seemed good 
to the Holy Ghost and to us." To know the mind 
of the Spirit was the aim of every believer. Even 
Paul would not have dominion over any man's 
faith, but was a helper to his joy, and w^ould not 
have faith stand in the wisdom of men, but in the 
power of God. The Holy Ghost gave command 
to the Church at Antioch to send forth Barnabas 
and Saul. The sin of Ananias was the lie against 
the Holy Ghost. In all things his supremacy was 
acknowledged, and no rule was valid without his 
sanction, and no life was Christ's until he had 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. I95 

taken possession of it. "Now if any man have 
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." 

It has still another value as giving illustration and 
type of the life and methods of the Church and 
fixing its character in all coming time. It was the 
simplest conceivable provision. A few men and 
women assembled in an upper room met the re- 
quirement of their Lord, " Where two or three are 
gathered together in my name, there am I in the 
midst of them." It was in striking contrast with 
the elaborate and impressive ceremonial even at 
that same hour, perhaps, exhibited at the temple. 
Here were no cathedral splendors, no robed priest, 
nor smoking censers, nor choral chants. The ac- 
cidents and incidents of worship were excluded. 
Yet here was the only authoritative assembly of 
God's saints on earth; and in the midst of them 
alone was the recognized and all-powerful repre- 
sentative of the Son of God, the spirit of truth 
and power. It was his presence that made it the 
most potent gathering on earth, whose worth 
should be known and its influence felt ages after 
the most stately council and the most gorgeous 
service of the day should have been forgotten. 
Whatever may be added on the sensuous side, 
these divine elements and factors can never be 
dispensed with. The most lavish displays of art, 



I96 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the most seductive appeals to the sensuous nature, 
the most convincing logic can never fill the place 
vacated by the Spirit of power. The wealth of 
nations may be poured into the coffers of the 
sanctuary, and the resources of genius put at its 
command ; and if brought with true faith and de- 
votion, in genuine acknowledgment of his right 
to our best and our all, cannot be lightly es- 
teemed. But they that worship him must worship 
him in spirit and in truth, and the Father seekcth 
such to worship him. That assembly is most 
highly honored where believing, loving souls have 
freed themselves most effectually from the dis- 
tractions of sense, and made the way open to their 
innermost consciousness for the coming of the 
Holy Ghost. For all the coming ages this was to 
be the single and sufficient test of Christian char- 
acter and standing, in the individual and in the 
Church. 

There is abundant instance given in apostolic 
writing, in the manifold forms of his working. 
He is the perpetual and only sufficient witness to 
the Lordship of Jesus Christ. " No man can say 
that Jesus Christ is Lord but by the Holy Ghost." 
He is the one witness to the sonship of the believ- 
er mediated by Jesus Christ. "Because ye are 
sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. I97 

into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." To 
them that are in Christ Jesus, Paul declares: 
" Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, where- 
by we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself bear- 
eth witness with our spirit, that we are the chil- 
dren of God." "The first fruits of the Spirit" 
is the pledge and guarantee of the harvest of our 
redemption, " the earnest of our inheritance until 
the redemption of the purchased possession." 
" The lively hope," the glow and splendor of our 
assured expectation of the glory to be revealed to 
us, are the effect of the presence and work of the 
Spirit within us. He reveals the things freely giv- 
en to us of God, takes the things of Christ and 
shows them to us, sheds the love of God abroad 
in our hearts, makes us to know "the hope of his 
calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance 
in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of his 
power to us ward who believe." He is the fruit- 
ful source of all the virtues of Christian character. 
" The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance." He is to give motive, impulse, and 
power to all the activities of Christian life. "If 
we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spir- 
it." He confers the special gifts which deter- 
mine each man's place in the Church of God: 



I98 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

" The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every 
man to profit withal." The word of wisdom, the 
word of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, work- 
ing of miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, 
divers kinds of tongues, interpretation of tongues, 
"All these worketh that one and the selfsame 
Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he 
will." He is the inspiration and power of the 
preaching of the gospel, as the Acts of the Apos- 
tles records, and Peter clearly intimates when he 
speaks of " them that have preached the gospel to 
you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heav- 
en;" and Paul, too, when he says that his own 
preaching was "in demonstration of the Spirit 
and of power." In brief, the entire life of the 
believer and of the Church was appropriated by 
the Spirit. Inward experience, personal virtues, 
their expression in deportment and conversation, 
and all the activities of life in every department, 
were taken under his direction and received their 
form and vital force from him. The transfer was 
complete from the region of human passion, im- 
pulse, and affection, of secular motive, aim, and 
influence, to that of spiritual life and power, to 
the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. It was a 
new birth of the Spirit which introduced the man 
into the kingdom of God. He became a new ere- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 1 99 

ation ; old things passed away, and all things be- 
came new. It is impossible to conceive a more 
absolute assertion of right and a more complete 
demonstration of power. This was the Church's 
final charter of her rights, the new covenant in his 
blood, sealed and attested by the Spirit of prom- 
ise. This fixes her place and character for all 
coming time and guarantees to every disciple the 
full provision for his experience and life in time 
and eternity. " He dwelleth with you, and shall 
be in you." " He shall abide with you forever." 

It was a priceless gift. It comprehended with- 
in itself all that was expressed in the life of the 
Son from the moment of the incarnation to the as- 
cension, as that life had included all that went be- 
fore in promise and covenant, law and prophecy. 
It lifted believers above the dim and misty atmos- 
phere of human conditions and set them in the 
perfect light of the eternal world. It enhanced 
their power immeasurably, and gave assurance of 
indefinite extension of knowledge of divine things, 
expansion of thought, and elevation of character. 
It pointed to the heavenly regions in Christ Jesus, 
as the only true and ample sphere of human life. 

It is no wonder that the man to whom these 
things had become the realities of daily life should 
denounce in terms of indignation almost divine — 



200 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

for the fire of the Spirit was upon him — the 
Church at Galatia, that had so soon removed from 
this lofty realm and turned again to "the weak 
and beggarly elements." "Who hath bewitched 
you?" " Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now 
made perfect by the flesh?" To our shame be it 
said, the succession in the line from the Church 
of Galatia has not been quite lost. Nor is it any 
wonder that he should come to an utter exhaus- 
tion of thought and language in his effort to ex- 
press the fullness of the blessing of the gospel, 
and be compelled to place his emphasis at the last 
upon the "power that worketh in us," "that is 
able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we 
ask or think. 

We can be at no loss now to understand the 
words of our Lord to his disciples, so incompre- 
hensible to them at the time and so fraught with 
sorrow: "It is expedient for you that I go away: 
for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come 
unto you." To come into intimate friendship, as 
he deigned to call it, with his person was the lar- 
gest boon that had ever been granted to man. It 
developed, cultivated, and enriched all the best and 
purest affections of our nature, quickened and in- 
tensified the finest sensibilities, elevated and en- 
larged the mental faculties, as no other agencies 






THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 201 

nor associations could do. The joy and strength 
of their life were in him. Even to touch the hem 
of his garment was to bring forth virtue from him. 
More than all that he was or could be to them 
they found in the Spirit. They were brought 
nearer to him than they were in the flesh, and 
what of his unsearchable riches he could not com- 
municate through the channels of incarnate life, 
the Spirit lavished upon them with exhaustless 
fullness. In their purified and exalted love, they 
learned to rejoice that he had gone to the Father. 
The Lord gave the Spirit as a witness to the 
world. The world which hated and persecuted 
him, and would, for his name's sake, continue to 
hate and persecute his disciples, was to be con- 
fronted with the testimony of the Spirit, the only 
answer to its malignity and the only power to 
meet and overcome its antagonism. His work in 
this sphere also is specific and positive. " He 
shall testify of me." He shall convince the 
world of " sin, because they believe not on me/' 
He will bring the faith and conscience of men to 
this sole text. He takes, as always, his line of di- 
rection from the Son of God. "If ye believe not 
that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." The 
Holy Spirit will know nothing among men but Je- 
sus Christ. The form of his testimony is given. 



202 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

" He will reprove the world of sin, and of right- 
eousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they 
believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go 
to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judg- 
ment, because the prince of this world is judged." 

The conviction of sin is the continuation of the 
work of the Son with more ample material and in 
higher light. Christ had commenced his ministry 
with the preaching of repentance, following upon 
John's baptism. He had used the law by which 
was the knowledge of sin to the full extent of its 
power, and had given it a depth and intenseness 
of meaning which it had never known in the hands 
of priest or prophet. 

He had gone beyond its possible limits and 
raised standards of character far above its loftiest 
suggestions. He had thus given a deeper mean- 
ing to sin and made it more exceeding sinful. All 
these higher elements of character he not only ex- 
emplified, but made them so essentially and insep- 
arably his own that no man could acquire them 
except from him. His own words were to be the 
ground of judgment, and the rejection of himself 
the supreme and hopeless sin of men. The Holy 
Spirit brings the same test to bear from a higher 
point of vantage. He takes the things of Christ 
and shows them to men — takes his self-renuncia- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIR.IT 203 

tion, his unimpeachable holiness, his vicarious suf^ 
fering, and the power of his resurrection, and 
brings them with the unanswerable appeal of their 
truthfulness and divinity to bear upon the con- 
science of the world. The rejection of the Lamb 
of God that beareth away the sin of the world is, 
in this light, the supreme ethical evil, because it 
involves the perpetuity and final dominion of sin 
in the refusal to accept the only provision possible 
for its removal. "How shall we escape, if we 
neglect so great salvation?" This reference of 
sin to the final divine standard of righteousness 
and love in the person of the Son of God is the 
.exclusive work of the Spirit. Neither will any of 
the ethical systems of this world succeed in pro- 
ducing conviction of sin, nor will the Spirit use 
their arguments or appeals. The ground of all 
the systems is infinitely below the level of divine 
truth and righteousness. The conceits of philos- 
ophy, the secular relations of men, self-interest, 
or, it may be, the averments of science which is 
yet very far from having spoken its last word, fur- 
nish the principles upon which they are framed. 
They have succeeded each other in the cycles of 
human thought, and each has lasted only until the 
next in order has come and searched it out. 
Among them all there has been no reference to a 



204 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

final and absolute tribunal of right from which no 
appeal can be taken, and in whose decisions the 
conscience finds final settlement of all its doubts. 
But when the Spirit with divine authority sets be- 
fore the conscience the claims of the incarnate, 
crucified, and risen Lord, conviction is absolute. 
There may be struggle, resistance, even lapse into 
moral indifference and death; but argument and 
appeal are felt to be impossible. The question is 
settled at once and forever; the consciousness of 
sin, dulled and latent it may be, but indestructi- 
ble, remains with the man, and, when the final 
judgment shall be set, indictment, plea, and an- 
swer will be needless formalities. "And he was 
speechless." 

Another sense has been given to the words " be- 
cause they believe not on me." They are taken 
to mean that the Spirit will convince of sin be- 
cause Christ's life and words had failed to produce 
the effect. In this view they merely emphasize 
the need of the Spirit to work conviction without 
special reference of the sin to Christ's person. It 
is an entirely inadequate view, at variance with 
. the trend and final effect of our Lord's teaching 
concerning himself. His life was a failure only 
so far as human observation could go. On the 
divine side it was the most triumphant success 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 205 

ever achieved in the history of men or angels. 
He was not taken to his Father's house in the si- 
lence and sorrow of defeat. 

Cherubic legions guard him home, 
And shout him welcome to the skies, 

while the everlasting gates lifted up their heads 
that the King of glory, the Lord strong and 
mighty, should come in. 

Nor did the Spirit come to men to tell of disas- 
ter and failure. He came with assertion of right 
in behalf of the risen and triumphant Lord. 
There was need for the Spirit, because he could 
reveal the Son of God as he could not be known 
under the forms of fleshly life. He could reach 
the inner sense of man as it could not be reached 
through fleshly organs. He was and is under no 
restrictions of the sensuous nature. He belongs 
to the realm of eternal realities, and can come 
without hindrance to the very heart of our human- 
ity. 

Over against this conviction of sin in the world, 
tne Spirit is to bear witness to righteousness, " be- 
cause,'' said Christ, "I go to my Father." It 
has heretofore been urged that righteousness is 
not formal, conventional, the product of human 
relations, but that it has its origin in the personal 
relations in the interior life of the Godhead, is 



2C-6 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

manifested in the absolute devotion of the Son of 
Man to the will of the Father, and has its final 
illustration in the sacrifice of the cross, made on 
one side to the will of the Father, and on the 
other to his love for the world; by which sacri- 
fice he, at the same time, made provision for the 
impartation of righteousness to men. He is " the 
Lord our righteousness." No other among men 
has ever been offered as an authoritative and rec- 
ognized type and standard of righteousness for all 
men and all time. The vision of his glory would 
soon have become dim ana the lines of his perfect 
features marred and finally effaced had the world 
been left to its own rivalries and passions and 
blind strugglings. Jerusalem had already almost 
forgotten him when the sound from heaven called 
together the startled multitude and Peter preached 
him risen from the dead, exalted to the right-hand 
of God, and still holding converse with men by 
his Spirit which he had shed forth. The splendor 
of his righteousness was reproduced in terms of 
the Spirit in the consciousness of men. The fail- 
ure of the world to retain God in their knowledge 
and the want of fixed ethical excellence already 
spoken of, as well as the degeneracy of moral 
forces in our human nature, and the effect of the 
coming of the Son of God in exciting hate and 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 207 

persecution even unto death, shut us up to the 
work and witness of the Spirit as the only hope of 
righteousness for the world. He speaks from the 
heart of the Father in the name of the Son. He 
passes by the formal discussions and artificial dis- 
tinctions of the human intellect, gets beneath the 
larring and shifting conventionalisms that order 
human relations, sweeps aside the shallow pre- 
tenses of selfish passion, and brings the heart and 
conscience of men face to face with the eternal 
order, the divine righteousness embodied and ex- 
pressed in Jesus Christ. Henceforth there is no 
possibility of righteousness but in Christ, and 
" they that hunger and thirst after righteousness " 
come to him that they may be filled. 

His final witness is to judgment. " Of judg- 
ment, because the prince of the world is judged." 
The separation between the sin of men under the 
dominion of the prince of the world, and the 
righteousness of the Son of God is declared when 
he goes to the Father. He goes where he was 
before. He leaves them where he found them. 
They are from beneath; he is from above. 
In the strife between them, though they had done 
what they listed and had been aided to the extent 
of his power by the prince of evil, he had main- 
tained his integrity, unswervingly done the will of 



208 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

his Father, borne the burden of the cross, and the 
humiliation of death, and coming forth from the 
grave triumphant, " declared to be the Son of 
God with power." The cross was the judgment 
of this world; the resurrection, the final defeat of 
the prince of this world. He could not hold the 
soul of the Son of God in death, nor prevent his 
return to earth and reassertion of his right over 
the race he had won by his sacrifice. Righteous- 
ness had its complete and final triumph when he 
cried, "It is finished," and went to his Father. 
The judgment and condemnation of the prince of 
this world is repeated and emphasized by the 
Spirit in the deepest convictions of even the men 
of this world. Enervated souls in the Church of 
Christ may truckle to his arrogance and men of 
the world may frame shallow defenses and shield 
the enormity of their crime behind the splendors 
of wealth and the delights of sense ; but the judg- 
ment has been pronounced, Satan has fallen from 
heaven, the prince of this world is cast out, and 
in every open conscience the Spirit of God re- 
peats: " Whosoever will be a friend of the world 
is the enemy of God." 

In the due course of action the Spirit extends 
his witness through the agency of men and by the 
ministry of the word. How far and how effect- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 20Q 

ively he carries his work beyond this limit and 
through other channels we may not know. God 
has never left himself without witness among the 
Gentiles; and it is hardly to be thought that in this 
last, richest, and broadest dispensation of his 
grace they should be left entirely out of the reck- 
oning. " Uncovenanted mercies " have been spo- 
ken of. There are none such. The first promise 
was for the entire race. The covenant looked to 
all the families of the earth. The heathen nations 
were in contemplation of law and prophecy, and 
the new and everlasting covenant in the blood of 
Jesus Christ embraces all that was ever proposed, 
and in its terms is broader than all that preceded 
it. The Holy Spirit can find means of reaching 
men that we know not of, and we may be sure 
will enter every open way that leads to a human 
conscience. Did the prophecy which Peter de- 
clared fulfilled on the day of Pentecost reach no 
farther than the Jewish multitude ? or did the sub- 
tle, divine influence extend itself over the wide 
areas of heathendom and beget a sense of want 
and unrest, stir within the souls of men a secret, 
indefinable longing which could not be uttered, and 
make them look upward for some rift in the closed 
heavens that had so long concealed the mysteries 

of God and life and hope? Was the Spirit poured 
14 



2IO THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

upon all flesh? Most assuredly the world's move- 
ment has been upward from that hour. " Earnest 
expectation" has been the feature of the world's 
life in all the centuries since. It has brought strife 
and change, and must continue to do so until men 
know him that speaks and consent to follow his 
guiding. 

We have followed the course of testimonies 
through all the developments of human history. If 
we have rightly understood them, the dominant and 
indispensable element in them is supernatural. It 
is divine. It is none the less so because it has 
taken on natural forms and made its appeal to us 
through the organs and channels of our humanity. 
That itself is of God and is God's chosen way of 
making himself known. He has adjusted himself 
to the changing conditions of human life and has 
had his part in the advance movement of all the 
ages. When the fullness of time was come the di- 
vine purpose and action culminated in the incarna- 
tion. Then the heavens were broken wide open, 
and all the supernatural forces were drawn to earth 
and accumulated in and about the person of the 
Son of God. Held in restraint by the conditions 
and necessities of his work, they were set free by 
his resurrection from the dead; and thenceforth, 
under the direction of his Spirit, they became, as 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT. 211 

they are, the dominant factors and forces in the life 
of the world. The hard conditions of life continue. 
We lie down in the wilderness and have naught 
but a stone for a pillow; but the heavens are 
opened over our heads and the angels of God are 
ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. 
Here is our Bethel. The Lord is in this place. 
This is none other than the house of God, and this 
is the gate of heaven. Here we have the certi- 
tude of our conviction. All testimonies converge 
upon one form. The scars may be in his hands, 
and the anguish of death in his eye; but we fall 
before him with the worshiping cry, " My Lord 
and my God." " Blessed are they that have not 
seen, and yet have believed." 



LECTURE VI. 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 

(213) 



VI. 

THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 

"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come 
upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, 
and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of 
the earth." Acts i. 8. 

THE essential facts of the gospel, the things re- 
lating to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
his " power and coming,' ' have thus far occupied 
our thoughts. The life of Jesus of Nazareth has 
been pressed upon our attention with the impe- 
rious demand that we recognize and accept it as 
the veritable and final manifestation, the complete 
revelation of God to this world. It is not enough 
that it be conceded that the phenomena of his life 
were wonderful beyond all the wonders of ante- 
cedent prophetic and miraculous life and action. 
There is a constant assertion of the immediate 
and eternal relation of the Son of Man to the in- 
ner life of the Godhead, that he is in nature and 
substance the Son of God. There are no possi- 
bilities of divine beino; and action which he does 
not appropriate to himself; and he makes the 

validity of his claim the only ground of hope for 

(215) 



2l6 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the world, and the rejection of it the sin and ruin 
of men. 

In proof of facts of such breadth and import 
he could not and did not rely upon anything less 
than the authority and attestation of the Father 
himself. He was the only competent witness to 
these things that lay hidden within the mystery of 
the Godhead. No man could come to the Son 
except the Father should draw him. He must be 
taught of God. The divine nature in the Son mani- 
fested in his life and works made direct appeal to 
the ethical and spiritual nature in man. The divine 
utterances through the ages before, in divers forms 
and degrees, as the world could bear them, the 
" Oracles of God," reenforced the appeal, as they 
had prepared the way for it, and discharged their 
contents into this last and only complete expres- 
sion of God. 

When this vast body of divine testimony had 
been accumulated and perfected in the life, death, 
resurrection, and ascension of the incarnate Son, 
it was committed to the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, 
who alone was sufficient to reveal and interpret it 
to men. 

In all this it has been clear that the testimony 
must correspond to the facts. In so far as these 
were within the compass of secular life and per- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH 21 7 

tained to the historical order, witness must be 
taken from that sphere and tried by its laws. If 
they were eternal, divine, the " voice from the 
excellent glory" the habitation of the Most High, 
must proclaim them. For the things of God 
knoweth none but the Spirit of God. 

The nature of the testimony being determined 
and the sum of it completed, it remains only to 
know how to make it available. On the divine 
side the Spirit, as heretofore seen, is commis- 
sioned to take the things of Christ and show them 
to us, to convince the world. On the human side 
the line and method of God's procedure remain 
unchanged and unbroken. 

1. "Ye" said Christ, " are witnesses." Men 
" of like passions with ourselves," not even of 
"the princes of this world," who had shown no 
very sublime heroism in the emergencies of their 
life, rather commonplace, though on the whole 
honest, earnest, well-meaning, even devoted men, 
whom the Lord had chosen, trained, and commis- 
sioned, were charged with this high function and 
immense responsibility. Whatever was to be done 
must be done through human agency. Not yet, 
nor indeed until the end, were the legions from the 
eternal world to be called into active service. 
" For unto the angels hath he not put in subjec- 



2l8 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

tion this world to come, whereof we speak." In 
silent, unseen ministries they may wait upon the 
heirs of salvation. But they cannot enter into the 
strife. As in the wilderness, they come for such 
service as they may render when the fight has 
been fought. The conflict is still with the " seed of 
the woman; " and to our nature are intrusted the 
immense, unsearchable resources of the gospel, 
which is the power of God, to be used through 
human organs and faculties until the end is 
reached. 

It is our Lord's final assertion of the dignity and 
worth of our nature. By the incarnation he had 
raised man above the common life of this world, 
declared his constant, unobstructed communion 
with God, and made him recipient of influences 
and powers belonging to the eternal kingdom. 
By this final commission and endowment he in- 
corporated men into the divine plan and charged 
them with the responsibility of carrying forward 
the plan to its completion, so making them 
" workers together with God." 

2. The value of the human element is deter- 
mined, as was the divine factor, by its relation to 
the Son of God. As all divine revelation and 
action hitherto had converged upon the Son, and 
through him alone life, light, and power had come 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 219 

to the world, so now henceforth men were to be 
reckoned according to their relations to him. 
They were to be baptized into him, must have the 
mind that was in him, seek and set their affection 
upon things within the realm of his supremacy, 
"where Christ sitteth at the right-hand of God." 
Christ was to be all in all. All the motives, im- 
pulses, affections, and powers of their life must 
come from him and move toward him. Qualified 
by such willing surrender and devotion to him and 
by the training, first given by himself, and provid- 
ed in the teaching of the gospel and the providen- 
tial discipline of life, they were assigned, each to 
the special place and work for which he was fitted, 
all to the one work of making known and estab- 
lishing in the heart and life of the world the 
claim of the Son of God as the supreme and only 
Ruler and Lord of this and all worlds. 

3. Their function as witnesses demanded im- 
mediate and personal knowledge of and participa- 
tion in the truth. They are not brought into a 
school to be instructed in forms, principles, and 
systems of doctrine, and thence sent forth to pro- 
mulgate theories and enforce them by rational and 
educational processes. They were witnesses to 
facts, none the less facts because in the substance 
and essentials of them they lay beyond the range 



2 20 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

of human observation, eternal facts which could be 
apprehended only as God is apprehended, as any-, 
thing and all things outside the region of sensuous 
perception and mere intellectual conception must 
be apprehended. The language used by these 
men in after years shows that they understood the 
exigencies of their situation and conformed them- 
selves thereto with all fidelity. " We cannot but 
speak the things which we have seen and heard " 
was the expression of their sense of obligation and 
responsibility. These things were not matters of 
casual observation or discovery, nor had they 
been brought to their knowledge for their personal 
benefit alone. They had been communicated to 
them by the choice and according to the purpose 
of God, that they might speak them forth to all 
who would hear. They were "witnesses chosen 
before of God." The opening verses of the first 
Epistle of John express with strong emphasis the 
whole case. " That which was from the begin- 
ning, which we have heard, which we have seen 
with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and 
our hands have handled, of the Word of life; 
(for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, 
and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal 
life, which was with the Father and was manifested 
unto us ; ) that which we have seen and heard declare 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 221 

we also to you, that ye also ma}- have fellowship 
with us : and truly our fellowship is with the Father, 
and with his Son Jesus Christ." Both elements, 
divine and human, are distinctly recognized and 
expressly affirmed. " That which was from the 
beginning, " the Word of life," the il eternal life, 
which was with the Father" — these realities of 
the eternal world are the body and substance of 
the communication to be made. "We have heard," 
" we have seen with our eyes," " we have looked 
upon, and our hands have handled," " the life was 
manifested unto us," " we have seen and heard" — 
declared in most positive form the reality and abso- 
lute certainty of the knowledge conveyed to them 
through their human faculties; while the divine 
process is more than intimated in the statement 
that " the eternal life which was with the Father 
was manifested unto us." The reason for the 
manifestation stands in the terms "we bear wit- 
ness and show unto you . . . that ye also 
may have fellowship with us." Their personal 
experience was to be communicated to others, that 
they also might be participant with them in the 
eternal life in which they themselves had become 
partakers with the Father and with his Son. In 
such terms they declare the certainty of the things 
wherein they instructed men, became the human 



222 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

sponsors for the truth of God, held themselves an- 
swerable for its maintenance and propagation and 
affirmed the right and power of men through their 
word to come into the same relations to the Fa- 
ther and the Son and realize in themselves that 
eternal life which was with the Father. 

They were not unmindful of the fact that in one 
principal aspect they stood before the world as did 
their Lord. Their claim would be challenged, and 
must be vindicated. In a case of such moment the 
witnesses must be unimpeachable. Yet their rec- 
ord was not perfect. They could tell of their per- 
sonal association and intimacy with their incarnate 
Lord, give the details of his life and death, with all 
the marvelous attendant phenomena, and declare 
that they had seen him risen from the dead ; but 
were compelled to admit that they had very imper- 
fectly understood him while he was with them; 
that they had had so little confidence in him that 
when he was subjected to the dreadful ordeal of 
trial, condemnation, and death by the cross they 
had forsaken him, and even after they had seen 
him in his resurrection life they had such feeble 
conception of its meaning that they remained long 
in doubt and indecision. Not until he was gone 
from them did they really know him. The human 
element had dominated them until the decisive 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 223 

hour when they received the Holy Spirit. They 
now propose to intrust their own vindication and 
the sufficiency of their testimony to the same 
power which had interpreted the truth to them and 
established them in the faith. 

4. "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy 
Ghost is come upon you." It was an imparted 
power, not the natural result of a higher enlight- 
enment, nor the development under new condi- 
tions of a natural capability hitherto latent and un- 
suspected. It was a positive energy exhibited, 
first, in the confirmation of their faith and the ap- 
propriation of every faculty of mind and life for its 
support and propagation; and then, in giving 
vitality and force to their utterance of every truth 
of the gospel. " With great power," it is said, 
they gave "witness to the resurrection of the 
Lord Jesus." Their preaching, as Paul's, was in 
" demonstration of the Spirit and of power." 
Nothing like this had ever been known in the cir- 
cles of this world's wisdom and teaching. Men 
of exceptional faculty and extraordinary endow- 
ment have profoundly affected their own age and 
even extended their influence, directly or indirect- 
ly, through succeeding generations; but none of 
them have been able to command and establish 
faith in themselves and their words so absolute 



224 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

that it could withstand all forms of opposition and 
persecution, and project itself in its integrity and 
with unabated vigor of life through all the changes 
of the after centuries. By the introduction of 
this element of power into their speech and life 
these witnesses to Christ, men of common mold, 
were enabled to make direct and effective appeal 
to all the various modes of thought and life in 
their own time and send it, a resistless and con- 
trolling force, into the new and unforeseen civiliza- 
tions of later times. The word and the power 
went together. It was this that differentiated 
Christian preaching from human teaching. 

5. The power was the immediate result of the 
coming of the Spirit. Its quality is thus distin- 
guished from every form of earthly force. It be- 
longs to the spiritual realm, and is not an attribute 
or attendant of the sensuous nature. It comes in 
upon the side of our nature that is in nearest rela- 
tion to the eternal world, and in its expression is in 
perfect agreement with the entire course of divine 
revelation. It is not a subjugating force, but a 
power imparted. It enables, not overpowers. 
" Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." 
The will has the sphere of its energy widened, 
and the understanding is brought into clearer 
light. The specific promises of the incarnate 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 225 

Lord look to this enhancement of ability, enlarge- 
ment of knowledge, and sense of freedom, and 
guarantee them in the gift of the Spirit. 

Upon these terms the Church of God is consti- 
tuted. It is the congregation, association, com- 
munity of men, called of God, to whom the Holy 
Spirit has shown the things of Christ and imparted 
his power that they may be his witnesses in all the 
world. This is the fulfillment of the word of 
Christ: " Upon this rock will I build my church; 
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 
The divine revelation of the Son of the living God 
to the consciousness of men is the sure foundation 
of the Church and its impregnable defense against 
the fiercest and most malignant assaults that can 
be directed against it. 

The divine element is continuously and most 
prominently set forth in every apostolic address to 
the Church and statement of its character; and 
everything that will not comport with this is care- 
fully excluded from the conception and represen- 
tation of it. " Chosen in him," " called to be 
saints," "in Christ a new creation," and many 
such expressions show how far removed, in the 
thought of the apostles, was the Church of Christ 
from the idea of any mere earthly association or 

life, and how thoroughly it was pervaded by su- 
15 



226 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

pernatural forces and its life identified with that 
of the eternal world. " Our citizenship is in 
heaven" is the confident utterance of a soul in 
conscious and glad fellowship with "the general 
assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are 
written in heaven." Whatever defects may have 
appeared in the human, the earthly manifestation, 
and however imperfectly it may have been devel- 
oped, this idea and ideal was always present to 
the minds of the apostles and gave form and mean- 
ing to all their instructions. They made no appeal 
to earthly motives, suffered the intrusion of no 
earthly influences, and pointed to no earthly ends. 
They offered only a divine model of life and 
character: " Be ye followers of God as dear chil- 
dren." " Let this mind be in you which was also 
in Christ Jesus." They recognized "the love of 
Christ," "the Spirit of Christ," "the powers of 
the world to come," "the fellowship of saints" 
as the legitimate forces constraining men to all 
holy conversation and godliness. They kept 
thought and attention fixed upon " the things 
which are not seen," " things above, where Christ 
sitteth at the right hand of God." They hoped for 
the " inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that 
fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for them who 
are kept by the power of God through faith unto 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 227 

salvation ready to be revealed in the last time,'' 
" for the new heavens and the new earth wherein 
dwelleth righteousness," " for the city which hath 
foundations, whose builder and maker is God." 
They cherished the longing for the coming of the 
Son of God, "the revelation of Jesus Christ," as 
the consummation of their hopes and the end of 
all their labors. The single condition and vital 
element of this super-terrestrial life was the faith 
which is " the substance of things hoped for, 
the evidence [or conviction] of things not seen." 
"The just shall live by faith." We " walk by 
faith, not by sight." " This is the victory that 
overcometh the world, even our faith." 

Without these high, spiritual qualities and facul- 
ties no man is competent to bear witness to the 
Christ. For he must speak the things which he 
has seen and heard. How entirely inadequate 
and ineffective for the purposes of the gospel are 
the gathered resources of this world's wisdom, 
has already been set forth. It is undoubtedly true 
that the effect of the incarnation upon the human 
side of our life is of inestimable worth. We owe 
to that ail the finest and purest elements of what 
we call our Christian civilization. It has ennobled 
manhood, elevated womanhood, refined human 
relations, given birth to chivalry, made the broth- 



228 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

erhood of men the watchword of nations, pro- 
claimed liberty to captives, and written hope for 
humanity upon every page of history. The 
streams of beneficence and charity that have made 
glad and fruitful such vast wilderness places of 
this world have come, though- often by tortuous 
channels and with turbid waters, from that foun- 
tain. We cannot depreciate these any more than 
we can speak lightly of Christ's ministries of 
mercy to the sick, the hungry, and the degraded, 
though often they went no deeper than the bodily 
life. But the refinement and culture and even the 
higher ethical life of this world are not the qualifi- 
cations in virtue of which men may witness to the 
Son of God. 

What we have felt and seen, 

With confidence we tell; 
And publish to the sons of men 

The signs infallible. 

The most luxuriant imagination, the most per- 
suasive eloquence, and the utmost vigor of logic 
cannot compensate for the lack of the spiritual 
faculty and the spiritual knowledge. Now can 
the Church as an organized community dispense 
with these marks of her divine origin and relation- 
ship and assurance of power and success. No 
historic order of ministry, no beauty and per- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH, 229 

fection of service, no luster of achievement in the 
world of art and letters, and no triumphs in the 
fields of civilization and government will suffice to 
establish her claim as the witness to the Son of 
God. "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and 
art dead " has been written of many a successor 
to the church at Sardis. Rome is not the author- 
ized symbol of the divine commonwealth. It is 
"Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother 
of us all." 

It is now not difficult to give in outline the form 
of the testimony for which the Church of God is 
responsible. 

1. It is bound to reproduce in individual and 
ecclesiastical life as nearly as possible the ideal of 
the Lord's life and work. 

In personal experience the conformity to the 
image of the Son of God is to be attained by the 
processes prescribed by him. Repentance, whose 
meaning is given in the words of Isaiah, " Let the 
wicked forsake his w r ay , and the unrighteous man his 
thoughts" changes the attitude of the man toward 
the world and divine things, puts them in due relation 
and proportions before him, and prepares him for 
the revelation of the things of God, the kingdom of 
heaven. " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is 
at hand ! " was the preaching alike of John and of 



23O THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

Jesus. Faith, the conviction and discernment of 
invisible and eternal things, apprehends the true, 
divine character of the Christ, the Son of the liv- 
ing God, begets a sure trust and confidence in 
him as the Saviour of them that believe, appro- 
priates the entire provision of spiritual blessing in 
the heavenly places in him, and becomes the per- 
vading element and potent factor in character and 
life. " By it the elders obtained a good report;" 
and every great discovery and achievement in the 
realm of spiritual life has been made by faith. 
When these conditions are realized the work of 
the Holy Spirit is effectuated in regeneration. 
The man is born again and enters into the king- 
dom of God. He becomes a new creation. Old 
things are passed away, and all things are become 
new. His relations are fixed in the divine order; 
and he becomes a participant in the righteousness, 
truth, and purity, the affections and the power of 
the divine life. His sonship through Jesus Christ 
is declared, and the Spirit bears witness with his 
spirit that he is a child of God. The fruit of the 
Spirit — love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, 
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance — appears 
in his character and experience and gives divine 
fullness to his life and determines his ethical re- 
lations to men. Nor is it a single, limited, and 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 23I 

final transaction. According to the unvarying 
law of God's dealing with men, there is constant 
growth in grace and knowledge. By the proc- 
esses of ordained discipline and the continuous 
operation of the indwelling Spirit his faculties are 
quickened and developed, his insight into divine 
things becomes more and more clear, broad, and 
deep, and his consciousness of fellowship with the 
Father and with his Son Jesus Christ more intense 
and uninterrupted. He grows up into Christ his 
living Head in all things. Through the stages of 
childhood and youth he passes to maturity of spir- 
itual life and becomes a perfect man in Christ 
Jesus. To what extent the growth may be car- 
ried by the gracious leadings of the Holy Spirit it 
is impossible to say. The resources of truth and 
power in the gospel are beyond human reckoning. 
The riches of Christ are unsearchable. The one 
example and model furnished us is in the person 
of the Son of Man. The freedom and fullness of 
his spiritual life, his unobstructed and constant 
intercourse with the Father, the breadth and depth 
of his knowledge of eternal things, the ease and 
completeness with which he appropriated to him- 
self the powers of the invisible world and his per- 
fect joy in all these seem to set him beyond the 
possible approach of common men. He uses for 



232 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

himself terms of universal import. " The Father 
loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that 
himself doeth." "All things that the Father hath 
are mine." But he withholds nothing of all from 
those that love him. " I have called you friends; 
for all things that I have heard of my Father I have 
made known unto you." " If a man love me, he 
will keep my words, and my Father will love him, 
and we will come unto him, and make our abode 
with him." " These things have I spoken unto 
you, that my joy might remain in you, and that 
your joy might be full." With utmost emphasis of 
speech he strives to fix in him the conviction that 
there is nothing in the divine life, or in the whole 
region of heavenly things belonging to himself, in 
which he will not make them partakers in the 
measure of their love and obedience. 

His words fully justify the apostles in the use of 
terms that seem to indicate that conscious Chris- 
tian life knows no limit. In Paul caught up into 
the third heaven and John in converse with his 
glorified Lord and gazing through the open door 
upon the inner life of the excellent glory — excep- 
tional moments, it may be, in Christian history — 
there are illustrations of attainments not beyond 
the reach of true and simple faith. Even these 
can hardly exhaust the import of the prayer of 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 233 

Paul for the Church: " For this cause I bow my 
knees unto the Father of Lord Jesus Christ, 
of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is 
named, that he would grant you, according to the 
riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might 
by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may 
dwell in your hearts by faith ; that ye, being rooted 
and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend 
with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and 
depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ 
which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with 
all the fullness of God. Now unto him that is able 
to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask 
or think, according to the power that worketh in 
us, unto him be glory in the Church by Christ 
Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. 
Amen." 

It is not helpful to the breadth, freedom, and 
power of the gospel to reduce the terms of Scrip- 
ture — terms of the Spirit — to the limits of tech- 
nical definitions. There are no measurements by 
w r hich we can stake off and in a quasi-materialistic 
way map out the ever-enlarging regions of spirit- 
ual life. In the glowing and broadening perspec- 
tive of the glories that lie before us we give but 
little heed to the steps of the way, and do not 
pause to count the milestones of our progress. 



234 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

Forgetting the things that are behind, we reach 
eagerly forward toward those that are before. 
The only rule given is the divine one: " To him 
that believe th all things are possible." 

This personal experience is sustained and ad- 
vanced by the methods indicated in the Word of 
God. Foremost among these is the faithful study 
of the Word itself, not in the critical way that we 
may become familiar with the letter of it, test its 
historical value, appreciate its forms, or avail our- 
selves of its prudential regulations for the direc- 
tion of our secular life; but with reverent, devo- 
tional spirit that we may learn what is the will of 
God in Christ Jesus concerning us, find out what 
God is and what his relations to men, what his 
work is in this world and how he will have us to 
work together with him. " The letter killeth " 
cannot be forgotten. We search the Scriptures — 
if we use them rightly — because in them we think 
we have eternal life, the life that is in the Son of 
God, of whom they testify. Their worth and 
power are known only to those who by constant 
prayer keep them in close and living relation with 
the eternal world. For the light that clears their 
pages must come from God, who declares himself 
in them; and the power that is conveyed through 
the oracles of God is the power of the Holy Ghost, 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 235 

who moved holy men of old to speak and to write 
them. Prayer, direct intercourse with God, in- 
cluding worship, thanksgiving, petition, is limited 
in its results only by the need, the spiritual capa- 
bilities, and the faith of the man, on the one side, 
and on the other, by the resources of God. It 
gains in intenseness and power by Christian fel- 
lowship. Participation in public worship and the 
ordinances of the sanctuary broadens and intensi- 
fies sympathy and adds a deeper, living interest to 
prayer. He who wrote "Forsake not the assem- 
bling of yourselves together ' ' understood the law 
of the communion of saints. To these more di- 
rectly spiritual forms of duty and service must be 
added the individual witness to Christ in every 
station and vocation of life. The boldness of the 
apostles is recorded as our example. The silent, 
unobtrusive ministries of a Christlike life, the 
conduct of business in his name and in obedience 
to his word, the chaste conversation which brings 
all the associations of life under the hallowing in- 
fluence of his Spirit, are the common and univer- 
sally required testimonies to the name and power 
of the Son of God. But the open and uttered ac- 
knowledgment of personal relation to him, the 
sometimes aggressive assertions of his right, the 
confession of him before men are indispensable to 



236 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

the vigor and success of Christian life. " God 
hath not given us the spirit of fear," and the 
cowardice that is ashamed of the testimony of our 
Lord gives small promise of the speedy fulfillment 
of the great commission of the Church. 

The power of individual life thus quickened, 
furnished, and kept in immediate relation with the 
Son of God is beyond all estimate. The want of 
it can be supplied by no form or force of mere 
ecclesiastical system. It has, more than once in 
the course of human history, been the prop and 
stay of a falling Church and the only guarantee of 
the perpetuity and success of the Church of God. 
It is the rock upon which Christ builds. But the 
completeness of it can be found only in associa- 
tion with all that are like-minded. The com- 
munion of saints is necessary to the perfection of 
the saint. " They without us shall not be made 
perfect," is the underlying principle of the divine 
commonwealth. While our Lord had respect to 
the single soul and made full provision for its life, 
freedom, and power, he had in contemplation the 
community of his disciples, the congregation of 
believers, and put them under such obligations of 
love not only to himself, but to each other, that 
they should be constrained into closest intimacy 
and fellowship of life and come by natural law 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 237 

and process into organic unity. He did not bind 
them together by the outward forms of organiza- 
tion and institution, by the law of a carnal com- 
mandment. They were held by the power of the 
indissoluble life, in virtue of which they would 
grow into one— into the unity of the faith and of 
the knowledge of the Son of God. 

2. To this body of faithful men was given the 
charge to secure and convey to the world the tes- 
timony in support of the claims of its Lord. Ac- 
cording to the direct promise of Christ it was to be 
guided into all truth and put in remembrance of all 
things that he had said to them by the Spirit. His 
words had included the exposition and interpreta- 
tion of the Old Testament writings. They were thus 
made the custodians of the oracles of God, which had 
been before committed to the Jews. In pursuance 
of the method used by the holy men of old they put 
into permanent form the things which they had 
seen and heard, chronicled the initial and typical 
movements of the Holy Spirit, and gave instruction 
in all matters of faith and practice pertaining to 
the new life. The result remains to us in the 
gospel narratives, the Acts of the Apostles, the 
apostolic Epistles, and the Apocalypse of John. 
The record thus made under the direction of 
the Holy Spirit gave to the Church of the future 



238 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

security against the vagueness and uncertainty of 
tradition passing through the ever-changing con- 
ditions of human thought and speech, furnished 
the final test of every doctrine and practice im- 
posed, by whatever authority of school, Church, 
or State, upon the conscience of men; set the 
divinely ordered utterance, with the unfailing ac- 
companiment of the Spirit, the Guide to truth, 
over against the claims of dim and easily misunder- 
stood intuitional claims, and maintained the au- 
thority of the Son of God expressed in his word 
and spirit against the insinuations and assertions 
of every form of rationalism. No miracle was 
wrought in fixing the canon of Scripture or pre- 
serving the letter of the text. It would have been 
distinctly at variance with the recognized way of 
God to interfere after this sort with the responsi- 
ble human agency. The faith and love and spir- 
itual discernment of the Church were trusted to 
decide the questions that were raised upon the 
place and value of each book. It was only after 
careful comparison with other scriptures, due test 
in the experience and life of believers, and faithful 
scrutiny of its claims to authenticity and genuine- 
ness that each of the recognized writings was 
admitted to the canon. The human element was 
allowed its largest freedom, but that human ele- 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 239 

ment had been raised to higher planes of life by 
the incarnation and had been gifted by the Spirit 
with preternatural insight and clearness of under- 
standing in the things of God. The time had 
come when God would trust men, even with his 
own work. 

In the same way the letter of Scripture was left 
subject to the vicissitudes of time and history, 
guarded only by the fidelity of the Church to the 
sacred deposit. The result has been seen in the 
late effort at revision of the text by patient, care- 
ful, scholarly men with all known manuscripts 
and versions of the world before them. The 
most diligent, long-continued search for errors, 
omissions, and interpolations has brought to light 
nothing that affects the great facts of the gospel 
or the doctrines that have formed the substance of 
the Church's faith and teaching from the begin- 
ning. The hate and persecutions, the clamors 
and controversies of the ages have failed to do 
serious damage to even the letter of the sacred 
text. What criticism may yet do it Is vain to in- 
quire. It has its rightful province, and ought to 
use all its resources to detect error and insure ex- 
act truth in the letter and substance of the record. 
We have no reason to fear the result of any legiti- 
mate investigation. On the contrary, we should 



24O THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

insist that the Church itself, restrained and guided 
by the Holy Spirit, shall exhaust the resources of 
honest scholarship in the labor of perfecting the 
text and putting every fact of Scripture in its true 
light and just proportions. To refuse inquiry 
would be to dishonor the faculties and agencies 
which the Son of God chose and charged with 
this function and in no small degree to discredit 
the testimonies so borne to the world. The en- 
dowment of the day of Pentecost involved the 
right and power to use the ordinary means of hu- 
man intercourse and, by necessary implication, 
the methods by which these shall be made as per- 
fect as the conditions of this world will permit, 
while it furnished ample guarantee to true faith 
for the perpetuity and integrity of the word of 
God. 

It is a subsidiary function of the Church to 
search out and provide for the publication of the 
proofs of Christianity on the human and earthly 
side. The stress of Christian appeal must, in the 
nature of the case, be laid upon the supernatural, 
the divine attestation and authority given to the gos- 
pel; and upon this, in the last issue, faith must be 
established . But it cannot be presumed that any real 
contradiction lies between the Word of God and 
the records of nature and history. These last are 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 24 1 

his own work, marred though they may be by 
human passion and misinterpreted by the preju- 
dice, ignorance, and malice of men; and it is no 
small part of the business of the Church of God 
to set them in their true light and make manifest 
the absolute agreement between the revelation 
that God has made of himself in his Son and the 
discoveries made of him from the things that are 
made. It was a true spiritual impulsion that set 
the Church, so soon as the faith itself was deliv- 
ered, upon collecting and collating the evidences 
of Christianity. It is our right to bring the whole 
realm of nature into the kingdom of God, to lay 
under contribution to the cause of Christ the his- 
toric and scientific w r ealth of the nations, and to 
make the reason of the world subservient to the 
interests of the gospel, " bringing into captivity 
every thought," every process of reasoning, "to 
the obedience of Christ." 

3. The witness to Christ is borne in the order 
and administration of the Church. The substance 
of these is clearly indicated in the life and teach- 
ings of our Lord and in apostolic example and 
instruction: the form of them is committed to 
the care of the Church, which, under the direc- 
tion of the same Spirit, adjusts them to the vary- 
ing conditions of time and place as may best se- 
16 



242 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

cure the maintenance of the truth and the interests 
of men. Uniformity is no more necessary to the in- 
tegrity of the Church of God than it is to the unity 
of nature or of the human race. The freedom of 
the Spirit is unmistakably affirmed as against the 
prescriptions and restrictions of the " law of car- 
nal commandment." But the freedom of the 
Spirit is not lawlessness. The principle of au- 
thority is asserted with equal force, and the right 
and power are vested in the Church to maintain 
subordination to the truth and fidelity to moral 
obligation. Everywhere and always the living 
Church has had its pastoral and punitive discipline. 
for instruction, regulation of life, admonition, cen- 
sure, and in extreme cases excommunication. 
" 1 know thy works, . . . and how thou canst 
not bear them which are evil ' ' is the note of a 
true Church which the Lord himself gives. 

It is an essential part of this function of the 
Church to provide for and maintain public wor- 
ship and the administration of the sacraments. 
This is the opening confession and avowal of the 
faith before men, its provision for the edification 
and comfort of believers and for their fellowship in 
Christ, and is also the open way into the com- 
munion of saints for all who truly repent and are 
prepared to make confession of Christ and assume 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 243 

the obligations of Christian life. In vital relation 
to public worship is the provision which the 
Church is bound to make for the preaching of the 
gospel. According to divine appointment the 
great results sought are to be reached through this 
agency. It is through the apostolic word, the 
gospel preached with the Holy Ghost sent down 
from heaven, that men are to believe. Men of 
apostolic quality must be found for a work of such 
high import and imperative need, men who may 
give themselves to the word of God and prayer. 
To commit it to the accidents of natural endow- 
ment, to allow its degeneracy to the level of the 
platform or the hustings, or to reduce it to mere 
ethical instruction, is fatal to its significance and 
effect. The preaching of the gospel is the point 
where the divine power exhibits itself directly 
through the human utterance. Men hear the 
voice of God in the word of the divinely called 
and duly certified preacher. It may be doubted 
whether there is full recognition of the place and 
power of this ministry in the Church and of the 
extent to which it ought to be carried. The 
readiness with which the authority is conferred 
with insufficient inquiry into the higher qualities 
essential to the work and the indifference to the 
hearing of the word seem to mark a decline in the 



244 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

estimate of this branch of service that is unfavor- 
able to the aggressive movement of the Church. 

Besides these things, it is a true part of the 
Church's ministry to organize efforts to do good 
to the bodies and the souls of men. Here, as in 
individual Christian life, the aim must be to repro- 
duce the ideal offered in our Lord's life. Heal- 
ing and teaching were combined in his service. 
The want and suffering, the ignorance and super- 
stition of the world make the same appeal to him 
now as in the days of his flesh. It cannot be 
doubted that if he were now on earth, with the 
vast resources of the Church of to-day at com- 
mand, he would send forth men, as he sent the 
seventy, through the length and breadth of this and 
all lands, to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast 
out devils — to "heal all that are oppressed of the 
devil." He charged his disciples to do the works 
that he was doing, and promised that they should 
do even greater works than these. In its feeble 
and halting charities, missions, and educational 
movements the Church gives proof that the echo 
of the Lord's words is still sounding in its ears. 
But the sense of obligation is neither universal nor 
strong; and until a more enlightened and thor- 
oughly awakened conscience shall respond to the 
demand of the Son of God, the opportunities of 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 245 

the time will be wasted and the crying needs of 
the world remain unsatisfied. 

4. One characteristic of the life of the Church 
as the witness for Christ remains to be noted : that 
which pertains to its relations to the secular life 
and power. It has been difficult, at some periods, 
to define accurately these relations, and determine 
the measure of rightful interference in the world's 
affairs. The individual member of the Church is 
also a member of the body politic, and cannot 
with a good conscience evade its responsibilities 
or refuse its duties. The rule for him is plain 
and simple and, to a true and bold adherent to 
his Lord, never difficult of application. In busi- 
ness, social, and civil affairs the principle holds 
good: "Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever 
ye do, do all to the glory of God." 

As a community the Church is segregated. It 
is in the world, but not of it. Within its own 
sphere it is bound to guard the life of the com- 
munity from the intrusion of worldly elements and 
principles and suffer nothing that is in conflict 
with its one purpose and charge, to make Christ 
and his salvation known to men. It is quite with- 
in the province of the Church to exact of its mem- 
bers that in the discharge of their functions as 
citizens, in the conduct of business, in the regula- 



246 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

tion of the family, and in the observance of social 
requirements they shall conform to and illustrate 
the law of life given in and by the Son of Man. 

The assertion and enforcement of these princi- 
ples within the limits of its own life and action are 
indeed the Church's witness to the truth before 
the world. We cannot hope by projecting the 
Church as a secular force into the midst of the 
affairs of government and society to change the 
currents of human life. Degeneracy of spiritual 
quality and loss of true power must be the only re- 
sults of such interference. The bold and uncom- 
promising enunciation of every ethical and spirit- 
ual principle of the gospel, the due and guarded 
enforcement thereof within the body, and entire 
freedom from entanglement in worldly schemes, 
however fair and promising they may appear, are 
the only assurance of safety for the Church and of 
efficiency in its measures for saving men. 

This rapid and inadequate sketch of the mean- 
ing and form of the testimony given by the 
Church is sufficient to put it in line with the fore- 
going witnesses and establish it upon the same 
ground as the medium of conveyance of divine 
revelation, the depository of divine power and 
representing in its individual and corporate char- 
acter and work the life and working of the Son 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH. 247 

of God. It adds nothing to the testimony gone 
before save on the historic and earthly side. It 
has accumulated and stored up, as the centuries 
have gone by, the effects wrought by the gospel in 
human life and history for the ages to come. 
But it has challenged the world's faith in the Son 
of God, not upon the ground of these things, but 
because of the " demonstration of the Spirit and 
power " attendant upon its preaching and its min- 
istries. If it has not lost its true quality, its pres- 
ence and work in the world are a perpetual as- 
sertion of the immanence of God in the history of 
men, of the supremacy of Jesus Christ in every 
realm of being, and of the indwelling of the Spirit 
of God in the heart of every believer and in his 
body, the Church. Its power is divine; its grace 
is supernatural. It does not commit itself to the 
fortunes of the world; it does not intrust its work 
to natural agencies. Whatever may be its visible 
relations to this world, it has deeper, truer, more 
vital connections with the invisible and eternal 
world. In the last time it will be seen, not emero- 
ing from the darkness and chaos of time, but de- 
scending from God out of heaven. Its life, as 
that of each member, is hid with Christ in God. 
and thence it shall appear with him in glory. 

And " every creature which is in heaven, and 



248 THE WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are 
in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, 
Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto 
him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb 
forever and ever/' 

Let ev'ry kindred, ev'ry tribe, 

On this terrestrial ball, 
To him all majesty ascribe, 

And crown him Lord of all. 



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